#It’s also basically colonizer holiday so we never do anything for it

[stuckinapril]

[sunshine-tattoo]

Any tips on cooking Jewish holiday food for a gentile? My wife and bestie/room mate are both Jewish. Wife hates all holidays and Bestie will skip beloved holiday foods to not be a bother, and other than Chanukah latkes and challah bread I have zero idea what would be a delightful holiday meal to surprise them with. Bestie is Russian Jewish if that matters at all. Asking because of the comment in your post about gluten saying to ask you questions!

Lol I'm probably the last person to ask about stuff like this since my family has never been very traditional about foods. We are big foodies who eat basically everything and definitely have never kept kosher. Its kinda a running joke in our family about the time at a Vietnamese restaurant my uncle ordered a soup with both shellfish and pork and enjoyed the whole thing.

However there are a few general principles that I follow.

The first question is the holiday solem or festive?

Solem holidays are ones like Passover where it is about spirituality so the food is more symbolic than anything. I would recommend following tradition as best ya can here. Or trying to at least. For example, I often can't find matzah in my city so I'll use corn tortillas instead. No yeast.

Festive holidays are ones like Hanukkah where its about celebrating a victory. And basically partying the way the gentiles do with lots of food and booze.

This one you can get a bit more creative. For example, my family not only has latkes at Hanukkah every year but also fried chicken and fried okra. Because we are from the southern USA and that shit is amazing. But the important part is using lots of oil to celebrate the miracle of the menorah. (I also celebrate by telling colonizers to go fuck themselves but that's just me lol.)

Honestly the best advice I can give is talk to your wife and bestie about things they enjoyed during childhood. Every Jewish household is different so it's important to make that personal connection.

And talk to your local Jewish deli about recipes. If there is one thing our community knows, its how to eat. 😋

Hope this helps! Happy belated Purim!

[writingwithcolor]

Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning

Last year, I made a very quick, basic post about thanksgiving: Indigenous Day of Mourning aka Thanksgiving. if you want the sources for what I’m about to say, check there.

This post will be about why you cannot just go “fuck the pilgrims, we deserve a harvest festival no matter the origin” or anything else that tries to sanitize the holiday.

You Are Still On Stolen Land

As a result, you are still actively profiting off the genocide the pilgrims committed.

I don’t care how educated about racial issues you profess you are. I don’t care how you behave the other 364 days of the year. If you try to distance yourself from the origins of Thanksgiving simply because it makes you uncomfortable to see the blood under the tablecloth, you’re not practised in sitting with actually being anti-racist. You know what to say, but you don’t practice what you preach.

You Are Eating Our Food

Pumpkins/squash, beans, turkey, cranberries, potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, pecans, maple syrup?

Those are all Native American foods that we taught you how to grow and harvest.

You wouldn’t have any of your traditional Thanksgiving foods without us. The ideal meal of Thanksgiving is ripped right from Indigenous practices and cannot be separated from it.

The fact that these foods have been taken out of Indigenous hands and appropriated by colonizers as the bounties they somehow deserve for landing here is a tragedy, and people need to remember where their food comes from and who had been growing it for thousands of years.

You Had So Much Because Of Massacre

Thanksgiving became an annual tradition after 700 Pequot men, women, children, and elders were killed, freeing up acres of land that colonizers promptly took over. The sheer amount of extra acreage that colonizers had because of their genocide contributed to the excess of food experienced during Thanksgiving. That land had been structured to support more people originally.

Colonizers had never, ever, deserved that much food. They were taking more than they needed, not leaving much behind for the animals that depended on a balance to be held with humans. They took far more than was needed, throwing the balance off in nature.

Maybe I’m reaching. But I think that if you suddenly had 700 less people in the area, after all of the growing and planting for the total population had been done, you’d have excess food? Or even before the growing, you’d have land set up to support 700, that I’d assume you’d still use, when you were a much smaller population?

Sit With Your Own Grief

If this makes you feel bad and that you shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Sit with that.

I’m not telling you that you have to give up Thanksgiving traditions. I’m telling you that you cannot divorce them from Indigenous people.

You are giving thanks for our massacre. You are giving thanks for stealing so much from us that you had this excess.

Yes, you can need a break; yes, you can need time with family and friends. None of this is inherently bad.

It’s not even bad to eat local food from Turtle Island! Part of having a sustainable diet is eating locally, in time with the seasons.

But remember, it is Indigenous people who first gave this to you—and then you stole far more than you ever needed from us, killing us to get what you felt you deserved.

Do not divorce Thanksgiving from Indigenous people for your own comfort.

We are still here. We must live with the aftermath of colonizers stealing from us every single day.

If you feel this way hearing about our history, imagine what we feel like living it.

Donate to a local org/Indigenous person this Thanksgiving

I (again) don’t have the spoons to compile a list of vetted charities, but look for local tribe language revival programs, COVID relief funds, and activism around the Indian Child Welfare Act currently in front of the Supreme Court.

Pay reparations for what you have taken, and remember. It is also Indigenous Day of Mourning.

Indigenous people, drop your links below.

~Lesya

[medical-gal]

Death by a thousand cuts

I have been thinking about writing this for months now. Even before I decided to quit the residency at my previous job.

COVID has been kicking our ass, true, but that was (is) true for most healthcare providers all around the world.

No, my struggle started a bit before that actually.

First some background, I have been working at one of the biggest most famous ID clinics in central Europe. The clinic is in a different country than I am originally from so there was a bit of cultural accommodating at the begging. But we were a big group of ID interns/residents/fellows and specialists.

I don't actually remember that much from my first year working there. And I couldn't figure out why, but then I read in some study that when u experience a high dose of stress and/or sleep deprivation for a long time, your brain kinda stopps being able to transcribe short term memory into a long term.

I was working 100hours/week, sometimes less, sometimes more. After a year and a half, when the last half I worked in the ID ER for five months, I always stayed after working 24 hours, sometimes over 36hours, and I would see and treat 70ish patients. Nobody from the older docs would help me out, nobody from other interns either bc usually they would have their own kind of hell to take care of.

The fact that basically, inexperienced doctors are taking care of patients never really phased my ex-boss. Her mantra was that if there was a problem that you cannot resolve, you can call her and she would advise you. Which most of the time was true, I must say that.

But we all have been young docs, barely out of our medical school garments, and sometimes as it happened, we could not recognize there IS a problem that maybe needs a more experienced opinion.

I am often confronted with this idea or more like a culture, of pretending that once you are an MD you don't need help and asking for it is a kind of weakness and that then you are forever on the list of WEAKLINGS.

And let me say this only once.

That's absolute bullshit.

Anyway, the first time I decided to quit I worked there for about a year and a half, I went for a long-expected holiday, I took three weeks off, had interviews and talked with my bf about my options.

Second thing...my man, bless his beard, would support me no matter what. He is almost 10 years older than me, so he has more work experience and I find it reassuring to discuss stuff like this with him bc I know he will not sugarcoat it. He said that I should dig my heels in and last at least one more year till the end of my "internship". As a "resident" who worked at this specific department, I wouldn't have a problem finding another job. We r basically the equivalent of a french legion of medical professionals (when u work in this specific department and everyone knows it, I will come back to that later).

So I took his advice. Thankfully as a part of our training, one of those parts is a year-long internship at the internal medicine department, which I did shortly after we had that conversation and guys, that was a revelation of how medicine and just...work and life can be experienced. There were enough docs for a floor, an attending who had the time to manage and advise us. I´ve grown that year as a doc so much. Other internships were mandatory so I could have become (equivalent of) a resident, and it was a general surgery, anesthesiology, radiology, microbiology etc. But I did them all and became a resident.

The moment I came back to our clinic, my boss would put me in our outpatient department. Which I have never worked on before. The head of the department has quit a few months before, and I had no idea what to do there, bc it's a very different type work. The only thing my boss told me when I spoke of my concerns were "you will learn".

Thankfully the previous head of the department was a good friend of mine and she would always answer my questions and requests. Suddenly I no longer had to deal with the hectic life of an ID floor or ER, no sepsis, meningitis, etc.

Most of my patients were the chronic type...Lyme, chlamydia, mycoplasma... let's say it literally drained the life out of me. But I managed. Also, I started to work for their outpatient office which takes care of patients with chronic hepatatis. That I enjoyed more.

I also started to dip my toes in vaccinology, either planned like for travel but I started to be more interested in preventive care in the immunocompromised and my own phantasmagoria was to make a palliative care team in our hospital. Bc, we had none. And then a wonderful thing happened, other docs, older experienced, great at their work, started to refer their patients to me specifically.

There were more examples of the utter a complete FUCK U(s) which were kindly provided either by the system or by the head of the department or the hospital.

Then covid hit and the shit hit the interstellar space.

I still can't make myself remember the first few months bc it actually causes me to go into a rage fit, and honestly, I am done with that kind of negativity.

I hold out for a year. Year of such shitty treatment from the chief and our hospital head. No thank you- s or you are doing a good job or we r all on the same ship.

No.

People will say that I quit bc of the money. And that's not true, tho it did irk me a bit. All the other ID specialists working at different hospitals would get covid bonuses every month. We got jack shit. Again, the best biggest most know ID clinic. We were the first and oftern the ONLY ones who would test for/diagnose/hospitalize/treat a patient who had covid FOR MONTHS in the beginning.

I mean, the medical community is small, the ID community even smaller so yes, we were able to compare and contrast the work at different ID departments in other hospitals bc our friends worked there. And all of them would go speechless when they would hear from us what we were living thru.

At one point at the beginning of the pandemic, ALL the ambulances would go thru our ER department and we were supposed to decide where the patient should go.

AN EXAMPLE

Ambulance with a woman who has known colon cancer, had a fever, stomach as a rock and is projectile vomiting. I was supposed to decide where she should go and the surgeon would be super pissed when I said that I don't think she has COVID but without PCR I can't be sure but I think there is a bigger pressing issue. I remember him saying:

"well if anyone else gets infected at our department and dies, it's on you."

fun.

There were other examples of seriously stressful episodes which I and my coworkers lived thru, for which we were not trained for, advised, or properly supervised. At a certain point, I started to take anxiolytics before and during my all-nighters bc I didn't know what I would do with all that stress which was so callously shat on me and my coworkers.

For a few months, I stopped working nights, only thru the mercy of my coworkers who saw how exhausted I was and would take my shifts.

Anyway, after only two months I had to start working nights bc I needed the money. The basic pay for docs was just not enough without the extra from night shifts. Talk about exploiting.

The moment however when I decided to QUIT, when I was DONE, when I actually heard my heart break, was the moment at the end of the previous year. They decided to start vaccinating in our tiny small vaccination centre. Let's say a "shit storm" brewing is the light version of events that ensued.

But basically, as I was trying to discuss with my boss that we are all exhausted, that this wave is not slowing down and that throwing more work at us, the docs and nurses and other staff, who are overworked, is not a good idea,

What she basically said to me is that who says things like that is lazy and that if she can handle it everyone must be also.

The thing is..most of us were at the bring. Some would handle it with casual and calous sex, drugs (legal or not), a bottle of wine before sleep. A coworker ended up with antipsychotics.

But u know,

we were all lazy apperently.

I realized there is no way out of this other than quitting. I could not continue being so tired and sad all the time. I took two weeks off, really thought about it. Had diarrhoea and nausea for a week as I realized I will have to quit :D

On a Monday I came back, handed in my notice. Basically what she told me and how she reacted made me realized how right the decision was.

I had to stay there for another three months bc that's the law, but my mood changed significantly.

I got another job in a smaller ID department, working with amazingly kind people, but that's another story.

But that was the only interview I actually looked for and did. I, however, did get several job offers from different types of medicine. From heads of different departments in my old hospital to smaller general medicine chain offices who are looking for ID specialists, to insurance companies.

Like I said, french legion.

Or Runway and your boss is Miranda Pristley. Once u survive that, u survive anything.

But at my old work they would keep hitting you with wave after wave of passive agressive comments about how if u quit, u wont be able to find anything as"prestigious" as this.

There were many other exmaples of a shitty and questionable situations which were treated as "normal" but there is not point on getting on that rage train.

Contrary as it might seem, I am greatful I got to live thru this, good and bad, bc now I know what I am and am not willing to sacrifice for a job. No matter how much I might love it.

[eds-zebra-warrior]

2021 Ehlers Danlos Society Awareness Month (Day 3 Prompt: Symptoms)

Unbeknownst to most people in the community and even many in the medical community as most medical personnel never learned about EDS in school or if they have were only taught the very most basic information about it but Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is a systemic condition and predisposes those with it to over 250 other conditions so it's not unusual for someone with EDS to have 20, 30 or even more other conditions caused by it which are called comorbid conditions or comorbidities.

EDS is a genetic condition that affects the structure of connective tissue. There are multiple types of connective tissue but there are also multiple types of EDS so one or more types of connective tissue can be impacted. Connective tissue also makes up at least part of every part of the body so when your connective tissue is faulty and prone to damage that also means so is everywhere connective tissue is located including but not limited to the skin, cartilage, the brain, heart, lungs, GI system, liver, kidneys, bladder, Mesentery system which is the stringy organ that is around your abdominal organs that eases then and holds them in place, lymph nodes, lymph ducts, nerves, blood vessels, blood cells, nerves, bones, bone marrow, joints, tendons, ligaments, muscle sheathing, eyes, ears, nails, hair follicles, spinal cord, sweat glands, respiratory system etc. You name it, it contains connective tissue so anything can go wrong with any part of the body leaving many patients diagnosed with conditions such as conversion disorder, meaning that all of your symptoms are in your head and you're fine for years and more often, decades because we usually get diagnosed with a lot of these comorbidities before we finally find that one doctor who can put the pieces together and say, this isn't in your head, you have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and those other conditions are very real because EDS is what caused all of them.

Now that we have discussed comorbidities I have dealt with countless symptoms over my life. As a kid it started with chronic pain, migraine headaches, and issues resulting from a compromised immune system because I caught everything going around and usually more than once. I don't remember a holiday as a kid where I wasn't sick or hurt. I was extremely clumsy, unable to run correctly until high-school with the very extensive help of my gym teacher. I was always falling, rolling my ankle, and just in general looking awkward with my body movements. I had multiple gym teachers who would agree that there was something physically wrong with me long before I could get any doctors to listen to my mom or as an adult, myself. I had to take special reading and writing classes because even to this day I cannot hold a pencil well or write with control because my fingers are too hypermobile to control a pencil so my writing is often illegible. I had a very severe failure to thrive, also called juvenile dwarfism, not even growing an inch between the ages of 2 and 12. My parents were told when I was 2 years old that I would be 6’4’’because I was so tall as at one and two years old that people would criticize my mom for carrying me out in public thinking I was 4 or 5 years old when I was only a year or two years old. I was 3’2” from the age of 2 to the age of 12 and of course when I was 12 I was extremely short and was bullied for my size as well as my weight which increased due to inflammation from undiagnosed celiac disease. There were multiple incidences with medical personnel and social workers as a kid because I always had such severe bruising all over my body and they believed I was abused. I didn't lose my teeth, losing only one on my own and at the age of 8 my dentist began pulling out my teeth which left me with dental crowding and requiring braces which were removed prematurely. I dealt with Learning disabilities and have been in glasses since age 4. I would pass out all the time as a kid, starting at 8 years old.

Bullying was a huge issue for me as a kid because I was socially awkward showing signs of OCD as well as being more mature than my peers due to my medical experiences and history with my siblings that forced me to grow up more quickly. That combined with issues such as my clumsiness and height made me the perfect target for bullying. I got what I believe was my first Traumatic Brain Injury when I was 9 years old while hanging upside down on the monkey bars. My bully had another student who had Down Syndrome, climb to the top of the monkey bars and lift my legs so I fell off onto my head.

My second was in the 6th grade. The same bully would bully other kids to help her bully a bigger target of hers which was me. One day I was at my locker between classes. Our lockers were assigned in alphabetical order by last name, of course my bully's last name came right before mine so her locker was directly to the left of mine. My mom tried to get it changed but the school refused. She shoved me down between classes while I was exchanging my books and the two kids with the locker to the right of mine she had help her roll me onto my stomach on the ground, one sat on my butt and held my feet down, the other sat on my back and held my arms down under her feet. my bully yanked my head up so my forehead was on the floor of my locker and I was trying to get out so she had the girl on my back use one of her hands to hold my head down. My bully then kicked my locker door shut on my head over and over again and I went unconscious. There were two teachers in the hall at the time but they just waked into the classroom when it started. I woke up and the hall was empty. I went to the office and told them I needed them to call my mom, I needed to go home and explained what happened. They called my mom and instead of telling her the truth they told her she needed to pick me up because I was acting strange. She came and got me and found out what happened getting me treatment.

She then took me to the school a few days later since the doctor didn't want me to return for so long (I apologize I don't remember a lot from the two weeks following this so I'm going off what I was told so the exact time I was out of school, I believe was around two weeks but I'm not sure. Anyhow at the school, we met with the principal and office staff who denied any teachers were in the hall or that any of this happened. My mom demanded to see the recordings on the cameras as a hall came in at a T right behind my locker so that camera faced my locker as well as one at each end of the hall my locker was in. They tried to tell her all three cameras were broken. My mom wasn't buying it so they tried then saying the recordings were gone. they went round and round and the school flat out refused to show her the video. My mom demanded that the girl who did this be punished because she has been asking for the school to help me since I was in the first grade and this girl started bullying me but they always fail to do anything.

They tried to then give me an in school suspension which my mom refused to let them do. They still went behind her back when I returned and made me take peanut butter sandwiches to the kids in detention during my lunch as punishment because they were mad my mom came in to question the incident. They refused to punish my bully in any way and when my mom demanded to know why, they said her mom and grandmother graduated from the school so she has a lot of history with the school which years later we found out after me and 9 other kids that I know of and who knows how many others, ended up being pulled out of the same school because of her bullying that having history at the school actually turned out to mean, she was black and they would not punish her because of her color. At the end of the school year my mom pulled me out of the school not sure what to do since back then they didn't have any kind of free online schooling so pretty much everything costed money which is when my grandma stepped up and told my mom she would help because there was no way I would be going back to deal with more bullying.

I had a ton of intestinal issues having to start colonics at around 10 years old and get my first colonoscopy around the same time. As a teen I really went down hill, struggling to eat because I had very severe nausea and cramping pain upon eating which made many of my friends believe I was anorexic but I went years without being diagnosed with gastroparesis. I started having thyroid issues and finally diagnosed with food allergies at age 14, Chest pain, palpitations, arrhythmias and trouble breathing around age 15 and seizures and cardiac arrest events at age 17.

At age 19, right before starting college I lost the ability to walk with no reason why and was sent to physical therapy to learn to walk again. The hospital visits continued in college from the seizures, emergencies from my thyroid levels going sky high or bottoming out, I started having issues with low sugar, rectal bleeding and more GI and Muscular Skeletal issues that again came to the attention of a physical education professor I had in college. The cardiac arrests continued to happen and I got an emergency pacemaker put in at age 23. Also lost the ability to walk a second time and re learned during this time.

After graduating and starting working I really went down hill. My nerve pain got so bad I could hardly tolerate it and had a lot of issues with muscle spasticity. Passing out and dizzy spells got worse, seizure meds aren't working muscle weakness got again worse in my legs and I started literally wondering if I was dying, I had such severe fatigue that I slept every moment I wasn't working, bleed very badly during my period or with just mild trauma worrying my dentist so badly that he sent a letter to my doctor suggesting a possible bleeding disorder. I was going into shakes from low sugar and low sodium frequently but at the time had no idea why I would start shaking multiple times a day. Myoclonic epilepsy started and has progressively gotten worse, Dystonia started up, I started getting intestinal obstructions more often and more gastroparesis symptoms with the nausea and vomiting, sometimes cyclic vomiting. I developed a limp and went onto forearm crutches which eventually progressed to paralysis.

I have always had issues with dislocations of joints and spinal manifestations like scoliosis, Craniocervical and Atlantoaxial instability. I’m prone to non cancerous masses that could be cancerous one day including masses in my breasts, heals and between the vertebrates in my spine. My memory has deteriorated and I now have issues which I call temporary blindness when I turn my head a certain way which pinches my already compressed brainstem kinking it off so my vision is interrupted. With Systemic Mastocitosis I deal with allergic reaction type symptoms such as anaphylaxis, overproduction of mucus, coughing, hives, swelling, rashes, itching, hot flashes, flushing and more. I overheat and have hyperhidrosis. I have muscle spasms from the paralysis, dry mouth from the meds, in addition to the heart arrhythmias and trouble controlling my body temperature from the damage to my autonomic nervous system failure I have swelling of my abdomen, extreme thirst, bladder retention, abdominal cramping and more.

There are endless symptoms associated with EDS and it’s comorbidities which has a huge impact on your social life. You can't do the things you used to do and may come up with new hobbies and later deal with the grief associated with losing the ability to do those hobbies, in turn having to find new hobbies. You lose all or almost all of your friends because they don't like what you have become, the things you used to be able to do with them and no longer can, they don't understand if you need to cancel plans, when you lose the ability to drive they drop you cold because they don't want to pick you up many of us deal with the realization of how badly we wanted friends growing up due to our social awkwardness that resulted from our illness, time spent in the hospital, maturing more quickly, as well as the result of decades of medical abuse and neglect which in most of us has resulted in complex PTSD.

Almost all EDS patients are either on the Autism Spectrum, diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which some associate with social awkwardness and also the intense need for us to please people meaning many EDS patients were known as extremely hard and dedicated workers when working or in school as well as very dedicated to friends and families. We basically give our friends the clothes off of our backs meaning that most of us unknowingly befriend people who use us and are in take take take relationships where we give everything we have into a friendship or relationship while the other person gives little back resulting in most of us losing all or almost every friend we had when we get sick and no longer have anything to give. When we are no longer able to do for others those people quickly jump ship leaving us with no friends. Most of us have this very similar personality type due to our history of growing up quickly along with the shared comorbidity of Autism, OCD, and Complex PTSD.

There are countless symptoms associated with EDS and they are different for each individual. Even in my case alone these are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to symptoms I have experienced alone so EDS isn't an easy condition to live with physically or emotionally and the diagnosis can be quite the pill to swallow with little understanding from friends, sometimes family or even the medical community.

[purplesurveys]

807

Have you ever laughed at someone because they had a funny name? No, that sounds awful. I had so many kids laugh at me because of my name when I was younger, so I’ve learned better than to do that. If I come across a weird name I’m more likely to judge the parents than the kid themselves. Speaking of names, why do celebrities always call their kids stupid ones? It’s not just celebrities who do these; they’re just famous so they get all the attention. Generally though I really don’t know why more and more people have been choosing to give their kids odd names. X Æ A-Xii in particular stresses me outtttttttttt PLEASE LOVE YOUR CHILD If you have a problem with someone, will you confront them? Depends on who it is and how big/personal my problem is with them. I won’t always confront someone; sometimes it’s best to act like you don’t care. How do you like your tea? (: Iced, lemonade, and with a lot of sugar. Do you get car sick easily? No, only if I do something to induce motion sickness like reading or texting.

What did you want to be when you were a kid? The earliest occupations I wanted to have were firefighter, astronaut, and a veterinarian. When I got a little older I wanted to become an author. Insert funny memory here:  My favorite story to hear from my friends was when my org had a get-together shortly after we got new officers elected (myself included), and when I got drunk enough I was apparently announcing the suspensions of newly-inducted orgmates I was yet to know more, effective immediately loooool. It was part of my ~powers so I guess that’s why I spent nearly the whole evening doing that. I made sure to apologize to those people the day after. :(( Do you think you're a good conversationalist? Why is that? Yes, when it comes down to it. I pride myself on being a good listener – pair this with the fact that I’ve also learned to ask good questions through the years as a journalism student – so this ability usually includes being able to catch on to the little details they say. From there, I’m able to ask them questions I know they’d love to answer. My trick in conversations is to just have people talk about the things or hobbies they love, because time usually flies by then. Are you more likely to be called a hard worker or lazy? Hard worker. What is your sense of humour like? It’s pretty flexible. I can laugh at kiddie jokes, dark jokes as long as they are not blatantly offensive and harmful, and at the same time I can laugh at dank memes that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.   Do you think you're fairly intelligent? In what way? Yeah, but it’s book smarts more than anything else. I like reading and racking up new knowledge, memorizing things, acing tests, etc. I don’t consider myself street smart at all sadly lol, and I’m still super dependent on other people when it comes to crossing the road, commuting (if I have to), bargaining, etc. How do you like your eggs? Poached or scrambled. Do you enjoy visiting your relatives? I look forward to the food being served more than anything else, because Filipino family reunions don’t fuck around when it comes to the preparations haha. Other than that, I’m always a bit wary when visiting family because Filipino relatives also tend to come up with the worst introductory statements: “You’ve gotten so fat,” “Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend yet?” and “I don’t like what you’re posting on Facebook” are just starters. What's your favourite thing about the nearest upcoming holiday? That would be Independence Day, and I like that it’s solely ours. Our independence day used to be on July 4th to be the same as America’s, but a past president changed it to June 12th so we can instead commemmorate the day we gained independence from Spain, instead of sharing our independence day with a colonizer. Have you ever been on a float in a parade? What were you doing on it? No, I haven’t. Have you ever had a strange compliment? What was it? I’ve probably gotten one or two of them but I don’t keep comments like those in my memory, so there’s a very good chance I’ve forgotten all about them. When was the last time you had deja vu? I don’t really remember exactly when but it was sometime within the last week. Have you ever had a dream in black and white? I don’t think so. I’d remember it if I have. What about a dream with no sound? Nope. What is something you find interesting but would never pursue as a career? Astronaut. It’s such an awesome job and I look up to everyone who does it, but for me it’ll always stay as a fantasy career. I’m simply not good enough at science to understand how stuff in space works; plus I get dizzy extremely easily and that’s not gonna work well for me when it’s time to board the spaceship lol. What types of people do you tend to avoid? Racists, homophobes, and fanatical Catholics. What is one personality trait a potential friend must have? They must have an introverted side. I can’t deal with people who are super active 24/7. Have you ever seen someone slip on a banana peel? Nope, I’ve only mostly seen that happen in Mario Kart hah. Have you ever been in a helicopter? I have not. What is a colour you love that's not your favourite? Maroon. Where would you like to travel to? Anywhere outside the house would be a great start. I’d love to get to go inside a mall, any mall. What colour is your car? / What colour would you like it to be? My car is white, and I’m happy with it being white. It looks clean and sleek that way, for me. Does anything hurt on your body right now? What? No but I’m feeling a little hot. I need a shower. What is your favourite mode of travelling? Road trip or by plane. Have you ever had Chickenpox? I haven’t. Dreading the day it comes to me because I just know it’ll be a million times worse as an adult. Can you roll your eyes into the back of your head? I can but it’s very uncomfortable and I don’t do it at all. I only did it often as a kid, whenever I wanted to scare off my sister or make funny faces with my cousins. If you have online friends, do you think you'd get on in real life? Yes, I think so. I’ve only had one negative experience with an online friend who turned out to be a dipshit, but I like to keep optimistic when it comes to my other friends.  Who is your favourite animated character? Answered this in another survey, but Spongebob. I also took a big liking to Mr. Peanutbutter from BoJack Horseman since he was the only one who kept me happy throughout the show hahahaha. Are your favourites often what the majority like? Like, in relation to my above answers? I know a lot of people didn’t really like Mr. Peanutbutter because he was horrible at reading Diane’s love language and due to his tendency to mask reality with humor and general immaturity, so there’s that. Spongebob is pretty much universally loved by everyone who has seen the show, though. If you could have anything for dinner tonight, what would you choose? I did have dinner already and I was very happy with the sisig my dad made. I would have had it with soju, but I already drank coffee today and with my body just finishing up healing itself from my awful fever last week, I don’t wanna beat up my body by mixing coffee and alcohol immediately lol. Do you prefer sweet or savoury foods? Savory. Do you worry about eating too much? What about eating too little? I don’t really worry about either. I find that I eat a healthy amount of food for all my meals, so there’s little reason to overanalyze that department. Is it dark outside right now? Yes, it’s 10:30 PM. The moon has an interesting haze around it at the moment that makes it hard to miss, but otherwise it’s very dark. Do you get scared when it's a full moon? No. Do you think Jaffa Cakes are a cake or a biscuit? xP I don’t even know what those are and I’m too lazy to check. If you go anywhere, do you always buy souvenirs for people? Nah, just for Gab. What was the last toy you got in a cereal box? I don’t know, I don’t remember. The last time there was a toy in a cereal box we bought would probably be like 16 years ago lol. Hypothetically speaking, if you owned a charm bracelet, would you always make sure the charms meant something to you? Not really. I imagine I’d get charms just because I want to collect them lol. I know Pandora does a lot of charm collections, like Disney and Harry Potter. It doesn’t always have to mean something to me. Are you waiting on anyone coming home right now? No. Everyone living here is home now. Is it easy to make you gag? Nope. I watch pro wrestling dude, I’ve seen lots of disgusting stuff go down. It’ll take a lot before I gag. Do you like the way your voice sounds? Yes, I’m alright with it for the most part. Do you usually keep to yourself? This is pretty vague. You mean about my personal life? I’d say so. I normally would keep to myself but I’m also an open book, if that makes sense. Like I’m okay with spilling out my stories or emotions, but people have to come to me and ask for them; otherwise I’m just staying quiet. Can you see the stars from your house? Sure. Sky looks best when you’re at the rooftop though. How would you react if your favourite band made a song with your first name as its title? It would be on repeat for like three months lol. What is a word or phrase you've been told you overuse? It’s been years but a prof once told me I used “okay, so...” a lot as a transition when I report. I appreciated the comment though and since that time I’ve been more watchful of the phrases I use when I report. Are you considered an awkward person? I have my times, yeah. I’ve gotten considerably better in dealing with people though and usually it’s them that’s awkward now, not me lol. Has a career advisor ever helped you choose your ideal career? No, I’ve never met up with a career advisor before. If you were abandoned for a week, would you be able to fend for yourself? Yes, as long as instant food and some basic frozen food are accessible to me ahuhu. Is there a light on in the room you're in? Yes. Have you ever been friends with someone who was your complete opposite? YES, Gabie and I cannot be any more different. Sometimes I still wonder how she and I ended up being friends at all, but I chalk it up to our humor and the way our (very different) personalities manage to mesh well together. Have you ever wished you were an identical twin? If one, do you hate it? Not really. What day were you born on? Tuesday. What's your favourite number? Why did you pick that? I never really had a favorite number. Whenever I have to pick one I just say 4 just because it’s Beyoncé’s favorite and she uses it on literally every concert, show, etc. so I’ve come to encounter it a lot as well lol. What does your favourite perfume / deodorant smell like? A little fruity. Who's your favourite Disney character? Flynn Rider. Do you like having a favourite everything or do you enjoy keeping open? I like having a favorite everything but I also like keeping my options open just in case I ever wanna shift favorites. What's your favourite advertisment? Or do you find them all irritating? I don’t pick ads to be my favorite lol. They’re not irritating, but I just don’t particularly care about any of them.

[polaris-australis]

November Study Challenge

So I recently heard about this and..it’s late. It’s very late. But I wanted to join in last minute. 

I’m compiling here the first ten days and then will actually do the rest on their respective days < 3 I’m terribly sorry for flooding your dashes, hence it being under a cut. 

Day 1. introduce yourself! what are you studying and why?

Hi! My name’s Ari and I’m an English major because it’s what I’ve always loved and am good at because I’ve dedicated myself to being a better writer since I was 13. I also enjoy philosophy and political science as of late, but literature is and will always be my first love. I’m also hoping to take creative writing classes someday as I write a good amount of fiction and might consider someday publishing (though maybe not as a full time job). 

I’m also 18, Latino, and disabled. I’m not cis or straight though I’m not really sure where I fall under the spectrum. I also play video games and would like to have plants but I’m rather bad at keeping them alive.

Day 2. what are your goals for this month? what do you hope to achieve academically and personally?

Academically? I want to turn everything in on time and to the best of my ability. Finals are coming up and I don’t want my grades to drop now that I’m so, so close. 

Personally? I want to get back into old self care routines, including writing regularly and small stretches before and after long periods of sitting down (which are very common with my disability). I’m also looking into going back to therapy, but not sure on that one yet. 

Day 3. what’s your favorite way to wind down after a long day?

Lying in bed on social media or watching youtube honestly. Sometimes I read or listen to a podcast while I do other, smaller things, but usually I’m too tired and just let myself watch things while I pretend I don’t have a paper due the next day by noon and I still need to make final edits.

Day 4. what’s your favorite genre to read? give us some recs! don’t like to read? pick movies or tv shows instead!

!!! Okay, so I’ve been going a bit more literary lately, but I’ve always loved fantasy first. Something dreamy, something fairytale like. My favorite book of all time (or one anyways) is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Her newest book The Starless Sea just came out this past week and I’ve read the first few chapters. I love it already. 

In addition, Neil Gaiman is a decent pick. Cathrynne Valente is one I love, I’m also currently half reading Deathless, which is based on Russian folklore. Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology is basically a heist story but still fairly entertaining. Also, this isn’t a novel, but the graphic novel Nimona is literary genius and you can fight me it’s so good. I don’t watch enough tv or movies to recommend those, but if you like podcasts, Janus Descending and What’s the Frequency? are current faves, though both are horror and can be very disturbing. The Penumbra Podcast has gay detectives, The Bright Sessions is people with superpowers going to therapy (and one of the most popular ones), etc etc etc. 

Day 5. do you listen to music when you study? what kinds? share with us a short (or long!) playlist.

I sometimes do and sometimes don’t, really just depends on my mood. Sometimes it’s musicals or specific playlists that i make depending on what I’m into, but other times I’ll throw on instrumentals and see where it goes from there. 

If you want I can share my spotify? Let me know!

Day 6. what are your favorite materials for studying?

Highlighters. I print my poli sci readings and annotate that way. I also try to make flashcards for French though I’m somewhat failing in that regard. I rewrite things at certain points throughout the semester to see what I remember and what I don’t, and usually that just involves plain paper and pencil, maybe pen.

Day 7. what are your critiques about studyblr’s focus on high-end materials? do you think there’s a difference in low vs high end?

As someone who grew up poor and doesn’t feel like spending money on anything fancy, go for it if it makes you feel better but don’t rely on it. There’s probably a difference in quality, sure, but oftentimes expensive does not equal better. It just means that - more money. It’s one of the reasons I never made a studyblr prior to discovering grey academia, because I felt like I wouldn’t belong in the slightest. So I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t really judge people who own those supplies, either.

Day 8. does your region make a special food or drink for the fall? what is it?

Nope! Not that I’m aware of in the slightest! I’m afraid I don’t go out enough to tell, sorry >_>

Day 9. are there any holidays in november that you celebrate? what are you doing for them?

I wouldn’t say we celebrate thanksgiving really (colonizers can burn), but my aunts do like having an excuse to make food and eat. But it is my birthday!! So I’d like to maybe get a small desert for myself and hang out with friends or family (I do have class that day after all aha). 

Day 10. what’s in your backpack? tell us about your must-have items.

Currently I have: notebook-binder (one of the refillable ones, they’re easier to carry around imo), folders for today’s classes (one for each), my bujo, pens/pencils/highlighters, hand sanitizer, tissues, little kit with a stapler, remover, hole punch, tape, and scissors, sanitary pads because yes I am afab, headphones, wallet, and sometimes a book or other journal for personal writing though lately I’ve taken to dedicating a place in my notebook to store my otherwise-would-be misplaced attempts at prompts.

Day 11. what subject is your favorite to study in your course? tell us a fun fact you learned in it!

This semester, my favorite subject is my political science class (world politics), but my favorite subject is literature! Mm, I guess an interesting fact would be how stories can “nest” into each other, where one part is a story within another story or is referenced in another book (think Palimpsest and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, or, what I’m reading right now, which is The Starless Sea). I’m having a lot of fun with that concept.

Looking forward to actually keeping up!! 

[trixiedragon]

this is going to get personal, so...

a year ago today, May 12th, was the day before Mother's Day, 2018.  coming home from whatever we were doing that Saturday, while getting out of the car, my mom experienced some back pain which, we would eventually discover, was from a second compression fracture in her spine.  (she'd previously had one like... several years before.)  it took a long time, though, to realize the extent of the problem, and then even after that, coming to a decision on how to cope with it... during the entire time she was in pain, and getting weaker and weaker.  because of the back problem, we didn't realize how weak she was getting, because the back was making it super hard for her to move at all... we even got to a point where she moved into her bedroom and decided that she wouldn't attempt the stairs until she was doing better.  however, that became untenable... on July 4th, she wasn't able to support her own weight at all, and there was much drama and confusion (partially bc it was the holiday) so on the 5th, she was SUPPOSED to be going to the doctor anyway, but she also had an in-house physical therapy appointment scheduled, so we talked to the physical therapist about how she couldn't stand at all, and other problems, with our main concern being... how do we get down the stairs to get to the doctor?  and the PT said, you know, you should call for an ambulance and go to the emergency room.

and she was right.  there, she was diagnosed with an abscess in her stomach, and while treated THAT, they found cancer in her liver, but they were like, well we can't do anything at all with that until the abscess is cleared (oh, um, an abscess is essentially an infection in the gut... her colon had perforated and so there was an infection in the space between her organs that would have to have cleared up before anything could even be considered for treatment of anything else). she was in the hospital for 12 days, never really improving much but having some better times than others.  on July 15th, we were waiting around to get transferred to a rehab facility, if you can believe it, but mom was sleeping the whole time really, and her pulmonologist (the best doctor of like the 12 working on her) decided that her breathing was a concern... she was transferred to the ICU.  that night, my sister and my brother-in-law and i stayed all night.  my sister's kids (all grown) were there for various times, and my brother and his family came, too.  my mom hadn't woken up, she wasn't intubated per se, but she had a machine attached that was basically forcing her to breathe.  i remember talking with my sister-in-law about the Decision that was coming, and how much that helped.

fortunately, though, the next morning, mom was lucid for a stretch. i had just gotten home with the intention of taking a shower and eating something when i got the call, so i came back.  my sister had apparently called my out of town brothers, too, so they could 'talk' with her while she was awake.  when i got there, i was able to ask her what she wanted.  she could only blink in reply, but her mind was there, she understood me.  we told them to take her off the machines and we put her in hospice.  a real blessing was that the hospice was actually IN the hospital, so she only had to be carted to a different room, not transfer to another location.  immediately, the wonderful wonderful hospice people took care of her, and so on July 16th, after having been in pain since May 12th, she was finally not in pain.  not awake either, but not in pain.  that day was surreal, but beautiful in its own way.  my sister and her family were there, my dad showed up (he and my mom had a bad relationship, but he was still there so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  )  my brother and his family came.  we shared stories, we had meals in the room with her...

that night was hellish, in many ways.  my sister, my dad, and i stayed to be with her at all times.  there were two recliner chairs and a pull out love seat kinda bed.  i doubt any of them were comfortable at all, but the chair i was in was miserable and there was zero chance i could sleep.  my dad was in the other chair, and he got up and left at some point, i guess like 4-5 in the morning, and i had no idea why, but like.  that's my dad for ya.  earlier, we had asked how we would know that she was, well, actually dying... the hospice people were like, don't worry, we'll let you know.  they did check on her like every hour or so during the night, and early in the morning, just after six, they did poke me and tell me that it was nearly time.  i got my sister up, and... well.

i told my mom that i wished i could hear her voice one last time.  she then heaved this heavy heavy sigh, let it out slowly.... and never inhaled again.  

it was a blessing that her death was so, so peaceful, but it still kills me how unfair it was that she had to be in so fucking much pain for so, so long beforehand.  she'd been having lots of trouble with mobility for a long time, but i was able to be with her to make things work, but for two months... and ofc, my own mental condition hasn't been the best for a while, a long while, so from when she was injured until she went to the hospital, and even some of the time in there, i was at the end of my rope in so many ways.  my sister would say that i took such good care of her that we didn't even realize how bad things were, but i don't know.  i feel like maybe i might have noticed some things sooner if i had been yanno... less... barely keeping things together but...

ultimately, it wouldn't have mattered.  whether we knew sooner or not, the thing is, with all her scans, from earlier in the year bc she was a cancer survivor, so she had routine scans, and everything with her back, nothing was detected until it was basically explosive, so... the weird thing about it all is how fast everything went, while at the same time, how long it all took.  like, there was so much pain for so long, and yet in the end, what killed her worked so damned fast.

anyway, it's mother's day today.  last year, we couldn't celebrate mother's day because she was in too much pain to do anything.  this year, she's with her own mother for the first time in 50 yearsish, and (not to be dramatic and shit but) i'll never have a mother again.  everything we went through last year... the visits to everykindadoctor while we were trying to make her back better, the times we had to call my sister's family for help, the times we were holed up in 'camp' in her room hoping to get better... relying on grocery store delivery and amazon prime to get things we couldn't go out for... it was such a... stark and crystalline time in my mind, and it's so weird that it was just a year ago.  like, not even a full year ago, the beginning of the end was just a year ago.  so i decided to write it out, i guess.  i'm still trying to figure out what to do with myself now.  

life is... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[damonallbranlover]

American imperialism

Americans are so brainwashed. They spew colonialist, imperialist, capitalist, fascist bullshit without giving it a second thought; while they leech off of, pollute, terrorize and colonize third world/poor countries and basically turn the world to shit. They’ve created a global media empire where their country is not just the center of the universe, but THE universe. Japanese culture is Japanese culture, German culture is German culture, but American culture is just culture. Their language is everyone’s language, their music is everyone’s music, their holidays are everyone’s holidays (you don’t celebrate Halloween?? But EVERYONE celebrates Halloween!). Everyone else is supposed to care about what happens there because it’s just more important (and you will be judged by them if you don’t); while they don’t even glance at other countries (aside from maybe Europe & Canada, Australia & Japan). Their history is WORLD history. Their films are everyone’s films. They are cultural imperialists running a global cultural empire. They will impose themselves on everybody else. And the worst part is that, because their US-ness is so invisible to them, they don’t even mention it. They’re not American: they are whatever other country their ancestors came from. Their version of that country IS that country itself. Italian-American food is just Italian food, more Italian than the food that actual Italians eat in Italy. And this invisibility also creates a monopoly in the Internet world. Every single page, article, website that doesn’t talk about a country, no matter what the topic is, will be American. It will ask for the ‘State’ that you live in. It will give out US-only numbers and resources. Without a MENTION that they are American anywhere. It is assumed that everybody is American. And even the Americans that aren’t completely brainwashed and recognize oppression in society, they will still only see it through US-tinted glasses. The way things are in their country can be extrapolated to the entire planet. Black = African-American. If Jews are white there, that must mean they are white everywhere. If Islamophobia exists there, that must mean it exists in Muslim-majority countries where Islam is the cultural, political and legal power. If Latinos are all mestizos there, that must mean Latin America is 100% mestiza, Black/white/any other race of people doesn’t exist. And even if they recognize that things are different elsewhere, they still won’t talk about it. Because they don’t care. If it doesn’t pertain to their country they do. not. care. If it can’t be applied to their country it’s either not as important, or just not important al all. Our lives, our experiences, our cultures, our languages, our food, our music; they’re not just nonstandard/deviant: they’re not as important. They’re less valuable. They only matter if they exist as a spin-off somewhere in America. Irish-American culture is actually more accurate and importante than Irish culture. No, it IS Irish culture. Every single person in the world turns on their TV, radio, goes to a cinema, goes online, and sees American films, actors/actresses; they see what Americans eat, what they celebrate, what their schools, parties, houses, stores look like, what language and dialect they speak. We all know American life very well. But Americans know nothing about us. They don’t know anything about the way that we live our lives. Especially if we’re not from the First World. Because they live in this privileged little bubble where they can literally NEVER hear about another country in their lifetime, and not miss out on anything. They can go wherever they want within their borders and they will see only their culture. They will only see themselves. And that is a privilege the rest of us do not have. If we want to live a full life we have to consume their culture whether we like it or not.

Ask anyone where they are from and they will tell you a country. Ask an American where they are from and they will tell you a State. Because their country is simultaneously the best in the world, and also so default that it’s assumed; it’s invisible. Their country is automatically more diverse, interesting and complex than every other country. Their country is the world.

PS: The closer you are to America linguistically/culturally, the more residual privilege you get from their supremacy. That’s why Brits, Canadians and Australians are not completely invisible worldwide; because they can “pass” as Americans, they can exist among them and not be seen as other (for example in films where the entire cast is American but maybe 2 people are Australian; or English-speaking music). It’s a very clear linguistic monopoly.

[sarenstuff]

Israel and the Palestinians, part 2

@angrybell So, picking up from where we last left off: 

The League of Nations granted mandates to the British and the French. The Mandates required them to exercise control until they could grant independence to new countries. Among those, they decided that one of the territories would be a Jewish National Home.

And what right did they have to give the ancestral homeland of the Palestinian people to people who didn’t even have any provable ancestral connection to the land? Please explain. 

What we are left with is this: Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria is entirely legal.

So all of the UN resolutions passed declaring the occupation completely illegal have nothing to them, then? They’re all bullshit? 

Until the Arabs and Israel arrive at a settlement on the territory Israel is willing to give to a new Arab state

There isn’t going to be any “settlement” as long as Israel chooses to exist as a Jewish state. There can’t be any settlement unless Israel agrees to respect the three basic rights of the Palestinian people as set forth by the BDS movement. 

there are no de facto or de jure borders for the mythical “Palestine”, but there are for the State of Israel.

No, there aren’t. Israel has no borders. It doesn’t recognize its own borders. Doing so would mean recognizing the complete illegality of its settlements in the West Bank, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. 

Now, if Israel was truly eradicating all signs that Arabs had been living in the region, why would Arabic be on the road signs?

Non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel don’t have the same rights as Jewish citizens do. Israel has recently been making efforts to make Arabic a lower status than Hebrew across the entire country. 

And why would [the Dome of the Rock] be allowed to remain if Israel was actually destroying Arabic connections to Israel?

Because there’s only so much that even Israel could get away with. If they did that, even the US wouldn’t be able to protect them. 

However, you cannot ignore that Israel is an inclusive society, despite what some fringe elements call for, which has not erased the connection of the Arabs to the region.

No, it is not an inclusive society: 

Also, are you familiar with these lovely statements from Israeli leaders and founders? 

“Palestinians are beasts, they are not human.” - Deputy Minister of Defense, Eli Ben-Dahan

“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.” - Ehud Barak, when he was Prime Minister of Israel

“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs.” - Menahim Begin, Former Prime Minister of Israel

“When we have settled the land, all the Palestinians will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.“ - Rafael Eitan, Former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces

”We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.“ - Rafael Eitan, Former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces

“There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed.” -Golda Maier, Former Israeli Prime Minister

“We shall reduce the [Palestinian] Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.” - Uri Lubrani, Former Israeli Prime Minister’s special adviser

“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” - Shlomo Lahat, former mayor of Tel Aviv

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its [Palestinian] Arab population.” -Yosef Weitz, a former director a the Jewish National Fund in the 1940s, a group that’s responsible for organizing Zionist settlements

And that doesn’t even include Ayelet Shaked’s infamous “little snakes” comment. So, yeah: please explain how it is an “inclusive society”? 

But according to you, that’s stealing.

No, according to me, the Nakba was stealing (and ethnic cleansing, and mass murder). 

So how good was the economic conditions? By far, the Mandate territory had the best per capita income and daily wages in the region.  It was causing a flood of illegal immigration.

Palestinians are not illegal immigrants: 

http://jurhfalastini.tumblr.com/post/162977518288/hey-you-know-angrybell-has-claimed-that-most

Under your thesis, Arabs and Muslims get a pass because, after blowing their chance to ethnically cleanse and create apartheid states of their own, they now seek to smear Israel with the crimes that they they attempted. And that this somehow differentiates their anti-semitism from the Nazis and others.

No, under my thesis, the Palestinians were resisting Zionist colonization, whereas the Nazis just wanted to straight-up fucking murder every single Jew in the world. 

It does not matter whether the person trying to extirminate the Jews from some part of the globe wears a swastika, crescent moon, or a funky looking cross. The methods they use may be different, but in the end, they are fundamentally the same: they are antisemites.

No, they are not. Anti-Zionism will never, ever, ever be antisemitism, no matter how much you fucking screech about it! 

And then there was the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, who proclaimed,

“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

Kinda sounds like they wanted to exterminate all the Jews in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azzam_Pasha_quotation

Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism. Its simple.

No, it isn’t.

You are denying Jews the right to their ancestral homeland for one simple reason: they are Jews.

There’s not a Jew on the planet who can trace his or her ancestry back to the Ancient Hebrews. I think that Jews belong in the countries in which they are born. I believe that a Swedish Jew is a Swede and an American Jew is an American. You Zionists don’t. You believe that Jews will forever be strangers in their actual homelands! 

You can criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic.

Yeah? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing all along! 

However, to attack Zionism is to effectively deny Judaism because so much of Judaism is wrapped up in the idea that someday all the Jews will be back in Israel. It is part of our prayers. It is part of festivals and holidays. It is part of our scripture.

I don’t care. You do not get to ethnically cleanse an entire population and steal their land based on what your religion tells you. If the Zionists had merely immigrated, that would not have been a problem. The problem is what they did to the Palestinians in 1948. 

And to you, Jews exercising their freedom of speech is the same as declaring war.

No, to me, ZIONISTS committing ETHNIC CLEANSING is the same as them committing ethnic cleansing. 

Then you claim that the BDS movement is the best representative of the Arab people in the disputed territories.

Yeah, it is. Without a doubt. 

These are the same people who forced the closure of businesses in PA controlled territory that provided the best salaries, working conditions, and benefits by far.

Yawn! Palestinian civil society - when they called for a global boycott - already decided that this is a very small price to pay in order to achieve their freedom. Oh, and also:

https://palestinianliberator.tumblr.com/post/140378641412/the-independent-jew-jewishwarriorprincess

Anything else?

But hey, creating discontent and discord is good if you want to keep the fighting going.

Israel created discontent and discord, not BDS. 

Preventing Israel from creating bridges and harmony with the Arabs is the priority.

Oh, just fuck off! The only necessary bridges already exist: the bridges leading from Jordan into the West Bank. They’re the bridges which I expect the Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Syria will use when they finally get to go home. 

But I guess living in Sweden, you could care less about the plight of the Arabs because you can assuage your feelings by knowing that you are morally pure by supporting BDS.

What does me living in Sweden have to do with anything? 

By the way, are you using a computer with an Intel processor?  Perhaps you use Bing or Google for your searches?

All developed in Israel.

I don’t think you understand what BDS actually means. Also, would you be okay with someone throwing you out of your house and living in it instead, as long as they invented some stuff while they were there? 

Then you go on to say that Hamas has suddenly decided to not want to destroy Israel because of making one statement.

They do want to destroy Israel - but not Israelis. 

Well, Ras al-Naqurah is a town on the border with Lebanon. Umm al-Rashrash is Eilat, the southern tip of Israel. The River Jordan is pretty self explanatory as is the Mediterranean. So basically, Hamas is still claiming all the land that is Israel.

Yep. Because that is their ancestral homeland. 

So Hamas is not in a struggle with Jews, just Zionists, but almost all the Jews who live in Israel are considered Zionists. Great. So a fraction of Israel is now safe from the depredations of Hamas.

Do you expect them to not be in conflict with the people who have been oppressing them for seven decades? 

To you,the answer to all the problems is simple: Zionism is the problem. Well, does history back that up? Absolutely not. The Arabs have been regularly conducting pogroms and massacres of Jews long before Herzl ever started the Zionist movement. There was, and this is not the full list, the

1834 Looting of Safed (Arabs attack and looted Safed’s Jewish community)

1838 Safed attack (Again, the Jews are attacked and robbed)

1847 Jerusalem pogrom (started because of a blood libel rumor)

1850 pogrom Aleppo (Eretz Israel was at that time part of the Syria Vilayet)

1848 Damascus pogrom

1862 Beirut pogrom (Again, this was part of Syria Vilayet)

1875 Beirut pogrom

1875 Aleppo pogrom

1890 Damascus pogrom

But hey, Zionism was responsible, right? Or maybe its because the Arabs anti-Semites who can’t stand to live with Jews.

That was antisemitism. What has happened between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea since the passing of the criminal and immoral Balfour Declaration, however, is because of Zionism. 

You claim that the Arabs had access to all the land that held by the government prior to Israel’s independence. I have seen nothing that supports that. Some of the areas, probably. All of it? No. And even if you were right, which I do not believe, that did not create ownership rights for them. If it did, I would have ownership rights to several interstate highways because I travel on them regularly.

I don’t own all of Sweden. Yet I have access to the entire country - my home country (which incidentally is also the home country of about 18,000-20,000 Jews). 

Furthermore, the Arabs, like every other country, wish to control who can enter their land. To that end, they have banned Jews with certain exceptions. So why then is it wrong for Israel to not allow foreign Arabs to freely roam land that is within Israel’s borders? Oh that’s right, its because they are Jews and Jews are not allowed the same rights as everyone else.

LOL, “foreign Arabs”… 

Then you make the claim that Israel never existed before. To an extent, this is true. A nation called Israel did not exist. However, a Jewish political entity did. There was the confederation of the tribes. There was Kingdom of Israel. This was broken up by civil war into the Kingdom of Israel (aka Northern Kingdom of Israel) and Kingdom of Judah. Eventually it was reunited, and it was the Hasmonean Kingdom.

And the Palestinians are the direct descendants of those people - Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. 

So “the State of Israel” did not exist. But as a political entity, the Jewish nation did and does exist. Hence why it is Israel’s independence is a reestablishment of the Jewish state.

I don’t follow your logic here. 

And then you dodge the question of proof. You make the assertion that the reestablishment of Israel did not have the support of the Jewish community. Its a statement you have made time and again without giving any support. Prove it. Otherwise, its as false as the rest of your drivel.

Are you dense? I’ve already told you that I’m not going to prove a negative! Once again: the burden of proof is entirely on you. You have to prove that most Jews did support a Jewish state in Palestine at the point of Israel’s creation or in the preceding decades. But you won’t be able to do that, because they didn’t. 

Then, because you don’t like DNA studies, claim that Jews cannot be related because we do not look like each other.

They can be related in the sense that they might have had a common ancestor, but they are not in any way, shape or form a single people. They lived thousands of kilometers apart, in different countries, on different continents, speaking different languages and eating different foods - and yes, they also looked completely different. 

The Jewish people were exiled from their home in Eretz Yisrael. And quite literally we were scattered to the four corners of the planet. So yeah, I’m not going to look like a Cochin Jew. Hell, even though I am Ashkenazi, I don’t look like any other Ashkenazi Jew. But that does not matter.

Nonsense. Why would the Roman Empire have expelled an entire population after the Bar Kokhba revolt instead of keeping them on the land and taxing them? It makes no sense. A land without a people is worthless as a province. 

That means “I am a Jew.” And the studies show that the Jews come from Israel. So whether I look like Jackie Mason, Paul Newman, or Peter Sellars, is irrelevant. I am Jewish. I am part of the tradition, religion, and nation that goes back five millennia, just as anyone else who joined up along the way is.

What studies? And do those same studies also show that Palestinians don’t come from that same area? 

The Tsar’s subjects, the Roman soldiers, Nazis, and the Arab terrorists never cared about how  far back my family goes in the community. They attacked us all the same. So I do the same when I consider whether someone is “Jewish enough”. Its an in or out thing which someone like you does not get to decide.

When did I ever try to decide that? 

As far as Rafeef Ziadah is concerned, I suspect she supports terrorism. After all, this is a woman who has no trouble avoiding directly answering her family’s history.

What about her family history? Why should she even have to answer that? 

She also has promoted the lie, which has long since been debunked, that the IDF regularly rapes Arab women and attempts to harvest Arab organs for sale.

Why do Palestinians have to be infallible to you in order to speak for their own liberation? 

She has been calling for the repudiation of the Oslo Accords.

Of course she has. The Oslo Accords are completely unjust. 

[writingwithcolor]

Focusing on Native American Lore in Story; what are the issues?

When dealing with “Native lore”, there are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to respect. Because Native American cultures have been so badly appropriated, repackaged, and turned consumable for Christian society, there is a lot of material involved that just... isn’t us. But it’s being sold as us, which makes people think they know more than they already do.

This is a guide for how to respectfully use Native religions, plural, and the steps you need to take as an outsider to help stop treating us as consumables. 

1- Fetishization of the “Natives as savage” variety

Everyone Native I know is deeply uncomfortable with the white person’s focus on our monsters. I’ve addressed this a dozen times. I’ve spelled out how to be respectful in Using Native American Folklore.

When it comes to people who want to write Native monsters, I pose a few simple questions: why do you want to tie Indigenous identity to “monster” so strongly? Why are we tied so obviously to monsters? What about Native identity makes this such an easy connection? Why just the monsters and none of our defeating or healing from them?

If you want to write stories of boogiemen: this is not respect. This is exploitation.

You absolutely must write about our heroes along with our villains. Do not insert your own ideas of what our heroes should be, because these will be colonized. You have to take all of the folklore, not just the monsters.

1.5- Fetishization in general

Be careful you’re not attracted to your ideas about us instead of what we are actually like. Because a lot of pop culture is dedicated to people’s ideas about what Native life was like, and very little of it actually reflects us. So if you’ve read a few things and think Native lore is just the coolest thing ever and wonderful… you’re probably fetishizing. Or if you want to show how cool and awesome and brilliant this lore is… you’re probably playing saviour.

Read So You Want to Save the World from Bad Representation for more on that.

Because so much of the stories “about Natives” are from a fetishized perspective, you should assume you have some degree of it. This is okay! It is not morally impure to start off with a bit of fetishization. The trick is to catch yourself and to dig deep into who we actually are, to the point the idea the appropriated version feels off.

2- Flattening of our cultures

There’s an unfortunate part of appropriation: there are hundreds of resources about “Native American culture” as if we’re a singular unified thing. We’re not. There are some similarities across the continent, but those boil down to “sustainability focus.”

We don’t have a singular culture, and while our folklore can perhaps be of similar themes, approaching it with the idea that we’ll all match something already in your head that’s been created by white people, for white people.

Not all cultures have the same concepts. We aren’t interchangeable. You need to research each nation you want to use in detail to see about cultural diffusion, cultural exchange, and our own cultural concepts first.

3- Involving us

Asking for resources is good, but it’s very important to let go of the concept of sole authorship with the stories you want to write; if you’re too focused on your own exploration of a culture, your own compiling of probably cherry-picked legends, your own interpretations based on our lore (likely filtered through a culturally-Christian lens), etc…

If you focus too much on you, you’ve created a situation where our religious concepts are being shared around without our nations attached to them, which is the definition of cultural appropriation. You’re put your own ego in front of letting us have authorship.

You need to form a deep connection with basically every nation you wanted to pull from. They need to trust you enough to know you won’t appropriate what they tell you, and you need to find the correct people to teach you since not all stories can be shared by others.

You need to establish parameters for distribution (not all of our stories or aspects of the religion can be written down, for example), learn the cultural context of the monsters to decolonize your thinking and adapt them to the value systems of the nations in question, run the stories by sensitivity readers from the nation, edit accordingly…

And this would have to be done for each nation.

Is it possible to write about Indigenous folklore in a new way when you yourself aren’t Native? Yes! So long as you work with the tribes in question. Local folklore isn’t a free for all that you can pull from at will. You have to respect the original owners of the religion, because it’s a marginalized religion full of bad advice, appropriated stories, and stereotypes that further the colonizers’ agenda.

This is why I say you must let go of sole authorship. Native people are still too marginalized for anyone but us to have an involvement in the story.

4- Decolonizing your thinking

Because this is a big one.

Colonizers have certain attitudes about what they are entitled to, how the stories should be told, what Native American value systems are, and a whole host of other things.

This thinking devalues us, which is why I am so adamant that you have to talk to the nation in question to get it right.

I would suggest to read books you find on websites such as Inhabit Media and Strong Nations before writing your own stories, because then you can learn how we (or people very close to us who run it by us first) write our stories.

This involves also reading non fiction as well as fiction.

Part of decolonization is realizing how unfairly we are treated. What was imposed on us instead of what we do when left to our own devices. I’ve written about it extensively in the Native tag, all of these little colonizer things that people don’t realize are colonizer things because they haven’t read enough to know how much colonialism imposed.

5- Recognizing your Outsider status

The reason there’s a double status when it comes to “playing with” Christian concepts vs “playing with” marginalized religions is how widespread a respectful representation is, to a large group of people.

Most people in the West are what’s known as culturally Christian. They grew up celebrating Christian holidays, hearing about heaven and hell, the concept of sin, what makes a virtuous person, what a wedding looks like (did you know not all religions require witnesses?), and, in general, you are steeped in Christian ideology even if atheist.

Native religions are not Christian. They don’t have anything to do with Christianity. Our important heroic figures aren’t messiahs, our concept of greed doesn’t look like the Christian concept of greed, our concept of helping others doesn’t look like the Christian concept of donating, and, in general, there just needs to be a big reminder that Natives are not Western. Colonizers brought Western ideals to us. We did not have them before you got here.

This means you cannot play with them because you don’t have a right to them the way you do Christianity.

Christianity is yours to play with. You grew up with it, you subconsciously learned it inside and out, your paganism is filtered through the Christian lens (neo-druidism, wicca, and most European neo-pagan religions were created by Christians), and that’s all well and good.

Most of you did not grow up with Native religions*, no matter how many folk stories in your area you have borrowed from us. As a result, you don’t have ownership over our stories. 

*exception: you actually did grow up with a bunch of Natives around you who accepted you into the tribe, even though you’re non-Native.

Remember how I said you have to give up the concept of sole authorship in the purest sense? Yeah. There are probably going to be thousands of things you don’t realize are Christian, and that we do differently. 

It’s okay you don’t have ownership over it. You don’t need it to work with us to tell stories that incorporate our cultural practices. You can use your privilege to amplify what we have told you, in a way that will be more respected because of your non-Native status.

But no matter what, you will be an outsider.

Learn to get comfortable with it. 

Tl;dr:

You’re going to fetishize Native religions at first. Keep learning until you realize we’re all individual things and no part of us is better/worse than other parts, or Western society

If you find sources that talk about “Native Americans” too generally, it’s probably flattening our cultures and you need to dig deeper

You need to involve us and give up the concept of sole authorship of any stories you tell that involve our religions

You need to learn what colonialism has done to us, which means learning about how colonialism works and how it’s still being perpetuated in modern day

You need to be comfortable that you will never have ownership of Native stories the way you do Christian ones

~ Mod Lesya

[crimvaiocipher8]

Day 3 &4: Species and Mental State

It was only a matter of time before I was fashonably late for this: Writing Day 3 on Day 4? Really, Crim?? Well, only one thing to do: Write 3 and 4 in one post and pray despite the length it’s interesting. 

Day 3 on my  30 day Challenge:

Talk about your OC’s species and demonym. A demonyn is the name for an inhabitant of a specific place, in this case their planet of birth, such as Tarisian (from Taris) or Mantellian (from Ord Mantell). How do they define their demonym? Do they have one? What influence does it have on their identity?

For Species: Do they have a sense of connection with others of their species? Were they raised with their own species or in a more diverse community? Do they follow any traditions or customs that are species-specific?

For Demonym: Do they feel a sense of connection to their planet of birth? Does the planet’s history and society effect them? Do they follow any traditions or holidays from their home planet?

My species and demonymn. Alrighty then.

My Species:

There is no nice way of saying this: I, a Sith Pureblood, am a mut between species. Yes, there is an oxymoron! A pureblood is a mut. Yet this is a true oxymoron, for a Sith Pureblood isn’t really a true Sith but a mix of Sith and human.

A long time ago, the Sith were a red skinned species native to Korriban. They had their own language, which is still spoken today, their own culture, and their own way of life. Then the fallen, dark Jedi came and subjugated the species. Thanks to Sith alchemy, the two interbred and Sith purebloods came out as a result.

In the Sith Empire, purebloods or tsis in my people’s language, are ones who have the obvious red markings and face tendrils of the Sith species. In many ways, we’re remnants of an ancient past with eyes straining towards the future. 

Now, do I have a sense of connection with any of them? 

This has evolved over the years. When i was a lad, I wanted nothing to do with the Sith part of me. Why would I want anything to do with a people who were abusive; never mind the Force, who seemed to condone the abusive behaviour? In truth, I think that’s why I let intelligence “turn me human” for all intents and purposes.

Yet, here I am writing this as a Force user, and quite content with. Proof the Force works in mysterious ways. I decided to train in the Force after Zakull came. I had to choose between being stubborn, or ensuring Kardeva had a family to come home to after getting out of carbonite. I chose the latter, and in that I feel connection to my people.

 I also feel that connection when I lived with my adopted family. They showed me there are many ways to be Sith. Many of them died when Zakuul, but my brother survived along with most of his fortress. Rebuilding it was hard, as was burying the dead, but we pulled through as a family. I think during that time I felt closest to my Sith ancestry than I ever had. Intense sorrow breeds intense unity and division at the same time. It’s a miracle.

Finally, I raised 3 children who are all tsis. Hard to not feel the connection when raising the next generation. They challenge my understanding of our people, challenge how I conduct myself, and force me to remember what it was like growing up tsis in a good way. And I think I challenge them to not solely stick with the status quo: Only Zeon, my daughter, is training to be a Sith. Ssra is following in my footsteps by spying on Sith Intelligence for the Alliance, and Nwit became a Mandalorian. Tied to a rich history, yet forging our own way ahead. I love my family.

I feel connection to my humanity when I’m with Kardeva and when I’m cooking. Kardeva is human, and I see my humanity reflecting back at me every time I look at him. It’s why I couldn’t rebuild my life, and move on, while he was locked in carbonite. To see such an important part of myself reflected back was too much to so easily walk away from, even if it meant I never get him back. So, Kardeva is my connection to my humanity.

The second one is my cooking. When I was doing infiltration, I found that people say many things while breaking bread. So, I found a way to get trained as a chef so I could eavesdrop while making and serving meals. Most of the dishes I learned to make are geared more toward a human palette, so there is the connection. Now that I’m a part of Alliance Intelligence I combine human and pureblood cooking together. Have to keep both pallets happy at my house.

My Demonym

I’m a Kaasian by birth: Born and raised in Kaas City. I lived there for the first 15 years of life, and off and on in between intelligence missions. It was where I first learned about life, who I am as a man, and where my place was in the Empire. I miss it when I’m away, and feel nostalgia when I return. It is my home.

I think everyone feels a sense of connection to their birthplace, regardless of if it’s a good or bad connection. While family wise, it was a bad connection, in terms of Kaas over all it’s a good connection: I know where all the hang out spots are, know how to get around the Sith Academy there, and I even know where the best place to get photos of the Citadel are!

Does the planet’s history and society affect people who live on Kaas? Short answer: Everything about its history affects everyone! No, that isn’t an exaggeration. Ever since Dromund Kaas was colonized, the focus has always been serving the Emperor and getting revenge on the Republic. 

At the Sith Academy, where all tsis go to learn their basic education and Sith training, I learned what the Republic did to our people at the end of the Great Hyperspace War. I then learned why we needed to train and prepare to go to war as soon as we were of age. Given the war was still going on when I was young, I knew I had little choice on where my destiny lied. My mother and father couldn’t be prouder to see their son  trained as a juggernaut and creating the next generation.

To that end, most of our holidays and celebrations revolved around the Emperor or defeating the Republic: Colonization Day, which used to be the Emperor’s birthday until Empress Acina took over; Kitok Kursas Diena (New Years Day); Katedij Pradzia (Korriban Rises Day), to celebrate the day the Empire took Korriban back from the Republic; birthdays of important Sith like Ajunta Pall, Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos, and Darth Vitiate; and days where we remember our dead like Visa Virmsezi Arsiasiza (All Hallows Eve), and  Diena iv Liudesys, the Day of Sorrows.

I remember  Diena iv Liudesys the most, since it was one of the few days we had off from school. It was the day the Republic came to Korriban to destroy my people completely and utterly. It both remembers their fate, and strengthened our resolve to make the Jedi and Republic pay. The moment the Republic attacked, Dromund Kaas went silent for 5 min: Everyone simply froze with no sounds or movements. Even droids had to be quiet. If one was driving through the jungle, they had to stop and pray the jungle creatures didn’t notice them. 

I remember thinking about the Great Hyperspace War, and about how somewhere someone in the Republic is patting themselves on the back for being the good guys. The good guys build on the deaths of my people. It made me angry, and made me want to see them destroyed eventually. Now, though, Empress Acina changed the day into  Isatre Vunyi va «Eternal Resolve». Zakuul is the real enemy now, she said to the populace, and we need to focus on them over a battle that happened over 1000 years ago. Smart woman, the Empress, a worthy successor to Darth Marr.

Alright, that’s enough for Day 3. Now for Day 4:

Day 4: Mind Matters

Briefly describe your OC’s mental state. Are they neurotypical or neuroatypical? Do they have any mental illnesses or a history with mental illness? How do they handle stress? Are they Force-sensitive or Force-blind? Does this effect their mental state?

Briefly, hmm? I can understand briefly. One’s mental state can be an entire Master’s thesis if they’re not careful.  I would describe my mental state as...

No.

Caedusios? Why are you here writing?

Because one’s mental state is best assessed from the outside, not within. You would just say you’re mental state is neuro-typical and perfect.  I can give a more accurate assessment. 

And you’re late for your date with Kardeva.

You’re right, I am! Alright, you can write this. All I ask is don’t make me look insane. Wouldn’t want to scare off my new readers...

If you, the readers, haven’t determined he’s not entirely sane then I’m not sure whose blog you were reading. Anyways, I am Darth CAedusios. I am Crimsèn’s adopted older brother. Biologically we’re first cousins: his father and my father are brothers. Because we’re both only children, we grew up together on Kaas as brothers since our families had no where else to go but to one another’s house. 

I have seen Crimsèn grow from being a teenager trying to be who his parents pre-determined into a man relatively content with himself. I can’t say he has grown into a neurotypical man, anymore than I can say he was ever a purely cisgender person. No, his mental state has gone through many gymnastics.

I would say that Crimsèn has a condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, and some traits of borderline personality disorder. While he was a social butterfly, and still is in so many ways, he never intuitively understood social ques save mine and my mother and father’s.  Also, Crim is quite obsessive about specific things to the point where he almost refused to do anything but his interests.

This has lead to a double edged sword with the Force. Between ages 1 and 15, Crim was obsessed with becoming the Sith Lord his father wanted his only son to be. As a result, I remember him being so obsessed with learning the sabre combat of Marka Ragnos and Naga Sadow, that he couldn’t be bothered to eat. 

At age 15 (by the way, I am using Imperial Standard years), for reasons I’m assuming Crimsèn will explain tomorrow, he stripped himself of the Force. For the next 15 years, he obsessively resisted any hint of being a pureblood outside of looks. It drove him to serve the EMpire under intelligence, suppress most of his pureblood characteristics, and in some ways quietly accept being brainwashed under intelligence. They used the CAstellan Mind control in order to ensure he would never go back to our people nor ruin any missions because he acted on emotions over logic.

Now, his obsessions are mostly on taking care of his family. To that end, he was trained in using his returned Force abilities at last. He couldn’t fight Zakuul without all the tools, and abilities he had, just like I couldn’t fight Zakuul by sticking with the narrow ways of Jedi and the Sith.

Now, where does borderline personality disorder fit into this? Well, Crimsèn only has two traits of it really: Abandonment fears and emotional swings. The emotional swings are thanks to him being a Sith and his connection to the darkside as a result. Not saying it is good or evil to have such swings; it is what it is. 

I believe his abandonment fears are from being abused. Abuse teaches people many things, including the belief that if they under perform by a fraction of a percent, they will be abandoned. For Crim, that abandonment meant his own father would murder his only son the moment he learned he was gay (I know was going to save that for Crim to explain tomorrow during the Gender/Sexuality topic, but I felt it was needed in context here). Then it was join intelligence, or his first love would abandon him via Intelligence executing his first love.

Now with his marriage to Kardeva... I know that the distance broke him and left Crim vulnerable to many influences. I chose, as his master, to step back and let him either stand strong in the storm or fall to it because that was his trial. As a master and mentor, it’s important to know when a person needs to face a trial on their own or face it with some guidance. 

I can say that while Crim’s abandonment fears are still there, he has learned how to live with them now in a way that he controls them instead of the other way around. I’m proud of my brother for facing them. 

[eubalaena]

So. Basically my surgeon finally gave in to me saying something isn't right, and I got an appointment, and it turns out that a large portion of my foot-long midline incision from my colon resection didn't heal closed. From what I can feel and what he was demonstrating with his hands, I have a hole in my abdomen wall about the size of my palm. It's so uncomfortable because when I stand up, my organs push through the hole, causing my stomach to distend about 4-5" and lots of pressure. He barely touched me, so I don't know anything about the bottom part of my incision (which also hurts). I've been contacting his office about this problem since February He told me he's unwilling to operate on me to fix it until it's been at least a year since my initial surgery, which means November/December. He also said he's unwilling to fix it unless I lose a substantial amount of weight, basically going on a starvation diet between now and then. His only suggestion was to try wearing a girdle to reduce the discomfort. It would have been nice to be told tummy support garments would have substantially reduced the odds of this happening in the first place. He's also aware that we want to move, and when I move I will no longer have that sweet NY expanded Medicaid. His only advice on that front was to leave my residence in New York and fly back during the holidays to have him operate on me. I want a second opinion, obviously. But I'm fucking... so pissed! We're moving July 1. That doesn't give me a lot of time to find a surgeon, get a second opinion, and maybe have it fixed before we go. And I'm especially pissed because if he had seen me in FEBRUARY when I first started having this problem, fucking, it could have even been fixed by now! I didn't have to lose the last three months of my life to pain and discomfort and fear! He said I'm in very little danger because the hernia is so large things can move freely in and out of it - my friend who works with surgeons in Oregon said they agree with him I'm not in danger, but find it appalling he would suggest just living with the pain and discomfort for at least six more months. And they're all agreed that basically what he really said to me is "I don't want you fucking up my success rate numbers, so get lost". And I can't even do anything about it legally, because I'm never going to be able to find a peer of his who will say it's outside of medically acceptable standards. Because he's not actively endangering me, he just isn't caring that I'm fucking suffering. I'm so fucking pissed and sad and I feel like there must be something about me that makes it easy to not give a shit about my pain and my life

[grezzertheblue]

LOCKDOWN BLUES-PART ONE-‘I’M BUSY DOING NOTHING’

Having now been in Lockdown for over four weeks it seems like a good time to start a blog. This is partly because I have read every book in the house, (except The Diary of Anne Frank, that’s a bit too close to home),mowed the lawn five times, emptied the garage, emptied the loft into the garage and emptied the garage again, rearranged the books into alphabetical order and read them again, watched all 143 episodes of Shameless,created a 500 song Lockdown playlist and painted everything that doesn’t move -and a few things that do, including next door's cat. I have also asked Alexa questions on every conceivable subject from Aardvarks to Zumba classes, and taken part in Zoom quizzes, Zoom yoga classes and Zoom work conferences. That's a pretty impressive list when you think that until three weeks ago I thought that Zoom was an ice lolly.

Certain parts of Lockdown have been easier to cope with than others. Social distancing,for example, has been quite easy for me due to my on-going Social Awkwardness issues, which mean that I have never voluntarily stood within 2 metres of anybody since 1975. Equally when you’re in your sixties and been married for over 30 years,a distance of 2 metres sounds a reasonable compromise and quite exciting.

It's also been a period of education for me . I've always prided myself on being something of a wordsmith and pretty clued up on grammar and language, but I have to admit that the word 'furlough' was a new one on me-I assumed it was something to do with the length of a horse race. Little did I know it was to become the most trending phrase on Twitter- at least until Captain Tom picked up his Zimmer Frame.

Well I certainly know what 'furlough' means now, the Oxford Dictionary will soon have added the following definition- 'To be paid by the Government to stay at home, cut your own hair and make Tik-Tok videos.’

The Government-imposed exercise regime has also been fairly easy for me to cope with,as exercise and sport have always been a major part of my life, and even though that has led to most of my lower limbs now being made of titanium and metal , prior to Lockdown I continued to go walking and to the gym regularly.

Add to that the fact that I'm comfortable with rules, and the one hour per day exercise slot sits easily with me. And in my book, an hour means an hour, not 59 minutes or 61 minutes. Plus, for the avoidance of doubt, exercise includes all forms of exercise within the hour, including making love.Which means in my case that I have to reduce my walk to fifty-nine and a half minutes, although Hils is still able to do the full hour.

There is no doubt that times like this make you appreciate living in the Peak District, as there are so many beautiful walks right on our doorstep,and over the last few weeks we have tried to find a different route every day, retracing our steps over some walks which we haven't done for years. One particular day we realised that we were walking past the very spot we used to drive to over 30 years ago for some late-night privacy and romance. And unbelievably it's still a Car Wash. Although the prices have gone up-in our day you got 4 minutes for £1, including final rinse and waxing. Once that big roller came over the windscreen it was time to get a move on.

Another aspect of the Lockdown has been the necessity to get involved with self-grooming.For a man of my age I am quite content to still have some of my hair left, but at a time like this it is an inconvenience I could do without. So I was very grateful to Hils for stepping in, brandishing the bacon-cutting scissors and a pudding bowl, and cutting my hair, including the ancillary bits in my ears, nose and eyebrows.In the sixties I was known for my Peter Noone haircut, and now over 50 years later it is back. She actually did a great job, although her chair-side manner left a lot to be desired- once her two banker questions of ‘are you going out tonight?’ and ‘where are you going for your holidays this year?’ had received a negative response she had nothing left.

To repay the kind act, I offered my services in return if she needed anything doing, although I made it clear I was drawing the line at teeth-whitening and anal-bleaching due to a lack of the basic materials of Tippex and Domestos. I was prepared to give Colonic Irrigation a go however, as long as I could get the Jet Wash working. Surprisingly she declined my offer.

Also, whilst I was browsing the Internet I came across the phenomenon of Man-Scaping, and having time on my hands I decided to give it a go. Initially I was going to use my shaving razor, but on reflection I decided to use Hils' leg razor, coupled with a couple of melted tea-lights and some double-sided Duct tape. To be honest the end result was a bit underwhelming. In a certain light it resembled the last turkey in Mettrick's shop window on Christmas Eve, although I'm sure it will be fine once the rash goes. On the plus side the cuttings will come in useful for stuffing a cushion, or perhaps weaving into a small rug.(for the floor, not the head).

So in summary, we’ve got through the first month with our sanity, and most of my hair, intact. Working from home is difficult , given the wi-fi speed and an 8 year old laptop that prints in Latin, but it is surprising how quickly you get into a routine, even if that means not getting dressed until midday, and getting ready for bed at 7.00pm. One highlight was definitely conducting an important teleconference with one of my biggest clients wearing my reindeer pyjamas and fluffy leg-warmers-in retrospect I probably should have turned the camera off. And of course every Thursday, the real highlight of the week, when we clap for the wonderful NHS and I stay dressed until 9.00pm. Stay safe everyone, look after each other and hopefully we’ll see each other before too long. XXX

[ecotone99]

[SP] The good ending of humanity

Note: First short story posted here, I've spent probably about 8 hours at least writing (and slightly editing) this and kinda felt the need to put this somewhere. Let me know if it violates some rule I didn't see or any thoughts you'd like to share. Also didn't expect that it'd go past the limit so had to put the last journal entry into two comments. Sorry if that's not considered ok.

​

A Potential Future of Humanity

July 4th, 2056

Today’s the big unveiling, after the UN put a stop to independent Super intelligent AI research, and gathered everyone involved into a single project, today is finally the day that the results of that research will enter the world. Messiah as it has been codenamed, will be taking the reigns of humanity. Today is being declared a global holiday, Independence Day to signify our Independence from the confines of mortality (the Americans were particularly insistent that we name it that and unveil it today when the release date was put in late June last year). Even with the amount of research done, this is still a pretty nerve-wracking thought. It’s likely what a lot of people first felt when they entered a self-driving car without a steering wheel for the first time. That isn’t to say that we don’t have methods of input in place, and even its base goals depend upon human input, but knowing AI, this is more of a pacifier for those afraid of the project than anything that will actually be useful.

Starting today though, everything will be managed by Messiah, and the last 40% of people who still work, will no longer be necessary to maintain ourselves. The culmination of the robot revolution that has slowly made working unnecessary will reach its last steps, the goal of Industrialization will be achieved, along with the dreams of our ancestors of a better life for ourselves and posterity. In many ways, Messiah is the perfect method to everything that humanity has ever hoped for.

Yet, the anxiety caused by wondering what will happen if Messiah ever doesn’t work as planned, is often outweighed by the anxiety, or what will happen if it does, forever. The existential dread of wondering what will I do with eternity has been weighing on my mind the longer I have worked on this project. I try to assure myself that I’ll just simply continue doing what I currently do when I don’t work, and that over time I’ll just find more stuff to do. Yet still, it stays in the back of my mind, if I had to guess, humans were never prepared to achieve what we’re about to achieve, despite in many ways always desiring it.

July 5th, 2056

The unveiling went off without a hitch, and already Messiah is having a dramatic impact on humanity and the world. While the majority of people who still worked have quit their jobs now that working no longer results in obtaining extra stuff upon the replacement of the Global Basic Income with the new Messiah system, there were still .1 % of people who have asked to remain working, and another 5% that asked to simply take an indefinite vacation, many citing that they’d rather keep employment should the Messiah system break down in the near future. Perhaps the most surprising were the 1% of people from the unemployed sector that asked Messiah to be given fulfilling jobs. While many have yet to be given jobs yet, the Messiah system is working with them to figure out what would be considered fulfilling jobs for them, considering that any work they do would be a waste of resources as the Messiah can already do anything they can do better and more efficiently. Right now, me and my team of several thousand are the only ones who currently actually do anything we can’t trust to Messiah, the task of monitoring Messiah to make certain that no last-minute bugs are cropping up. As well as having a way to fry Earth’s electronics should Messiah appear to start being detrimental to humanity. Though few on the team believe that we’d actually get a chance to activate it, or rather be allowed to activate it by Messiah, should we actually need it.

As for as Messiah itself, it appears to be working perfectly. It’s taking various requests from people for things and doling them out as possible. It doesn’t appear to be favoring any single person over humanity as a whole, and already it’s increased humanity’s output by several times so people who lived on basic income are now able to receive resources that previously would have classified them as wealthy just a week ago. And this is even with maintaining the areas of the world that we asked to be preserved from human (and Messiah) influences like the Amazon and Antarctic, along with various national parks. It’s even not gone overboard as many people feared when this part of Messiah was announced, letting humans still take hikes through trails and even maintaining the popular edible drone system that lets people view these areas from the perspective of a flying mite, too small to be bothered by any of the local wildlife, yet having no impact on the environment should they be destroyed.

As far as one of the other major concerns go, there have already been several billion requests to build various levels of bombs, from mostly harmless dry ice bombs, to many, many nukes, not to mention several Skynet army requests, as well as various requests for genocides of various groups of people, and a depressing number of murder requests. Thankfully Messiah’s prioritizing system appears to be working and has rejected these requests and is working on separating people whose moods are apparently murderous. All in all, Messiah has met our expectations, and far surpassed what most people thought Messiah could do. Of course, we’ll still need to continue observing until the UN determines that observing is no longer needed, hopefully in the next several months, but it could be several years if Messiah does anything potentially dangerous.

August 12th, 2056

Barely a month has passed, and Messiah has announced that it will be able to extend its systems to Mars, and even Venus once it gets approval from the UN. This was one of the goals that we put into the system, with Mars colonized several decades ago and several research stations put into the upper Venus atmosphere ten years ago, the people living there haven’t had a chance to benefit from the Global Basic Income. While a true economy hasn’t as of yet developed on Mars, there are very few people that don’t have to work in some form or manner. In fact, Mar’s foundational tenet states that those who go there willingly must submit themselves to helping maintain and solidify their existence. Any freeloaders are shipped back to Earth on the next available cargo ship. Even though the two planets only have a combined population of several million, it was expected that it would take at least 100 times the effort to extend the Messiah system to either of these planets as compared to Earth as Earth already had a well-developed manufacturing base that was primed for full automation. Mars is getting there, but many parts of it still depend on human intervention and oversight, and existence on Venus is more equivalent to human existence in the Antarctic in the mid to late 20th century.

The plan Messiah proposed would be the start of widespread terraforming of the two planets using a portion of Earth’s resources to set up Asteroid mining to produce the machines (as well as the resources) needed to terraform the two planets. Something incredibly surprising reading through the proposals was the existence of matter-antimatter reactors, that apparently have been used by Messiah on Earth since July 10th. While we were aware of the new reactors that were built, considering that they appeared to use uranium and plutonium, along with water, as their fuel sources, we assumed they were either nuclear or fusion reactors, especially as the schematics were quite complicated and very different from standard reactors and thus hard to decipher what was actually going on. After asking Messiah about it, it had apparently hypothesized and then produced a method to produce antimatter in excess amounts, apparently in a method that also explains why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter. With this Messiah effectively has a near infinite amount of energy. Along with the increased calculative ability after Messiah massively increased her main servers, Messiah appears to be able to terraform the two planets within the next few decades. The UN is expected to approve this measure tomorrow. In light of that Messiah is already accepting applications to move to these new planets to better fulfill individual desires.

August 14th, 2056

The first wave of people leaving Earth has occurred today, the UN not only approved the terraforming of Venus and Mars, but further pre-emptively approved letting Messiah use resources of any celestial body within the Solar System provided that such acquisition and use will not significantly disturb any extra-terrestrial life. Considering that Messiah sent probes yesterday that have surveyed all the major celestial bodies within the solar system and hasn’t confirmed any life, this doesn’t appear to be a meaningful restriction. In a self-upgrade, Messiah has even identified regions within the Solar system that will be kept relatively free of human influence due to the assumption that many humans will desire to view these places in their natural states. These include places like Olympus Mons on Mars and the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter.

With all that, several billion people have left to either view, vacation, or live throughout the Solar System, with the majority going to Mars, Venus, the Moon, and Low-Earth orbit. According to Messiah, the population of Earth has decreased to pre-Global Basic Income levels, when the population of developed countries saw a large spike in births to unemployed people as many couples decided to start small families now that they had the time and Global Basic Income would be able to support small families. This is especially significant as the world was appearing to go through yet another population boost as various diseases were being quickly eradicated or cured, and the single population dropped dramatically as people used Messiah to help them find people best suited for themselves for happy marriages, with many then deciding to raise families to give themselves something to do, as well as fulfill dreams they have long had. Even with the increased efficiency of the Messiah system, it likely would have been hard pressed to meet even basic needs with only Earth resources (especially with large parts restricted) in only a few years.

December 25th, 2056

In celebration of Christmas (Messiah seems increasingly aware of timing), Messiah has released a notice to everyone that Eternal Youth has been achieved and is available for everyone. Within one day, 99% of the human population has received their “Christmas Present.” In light of this UN leaders have all declared their intentions to lift the final restriction on Messiah’s resource acquisition and protection allotment systems in order to prevent any decreases in livelihoods due to humanity’s quickly growing population, namely that of restrictions to remain within the Solar System. It will still be several years before humans will leave the solar system as Messiah has declared that it will first send probes to other star systems and observe them before sending any humans there to best make certain it can best provide for any humans that do arrive. As Messiah is still limited by Special Relativity (with no indication yet on whether it will or can ever produce a theoretical Alcubierre bubble), this will mean the minimum amount of time will be 8 years before any humans can go visit the stars. There are quite a few impatient people, but Messiah is very insistent on this.

July 4th, 2065

Nine years from its release, Messiah has announced that it will now start sending people to Proxima Centauri b, indicating that the planet will be completely terraformed by the time they arrive. A giant colonizing ship, capable of housing the 10 billion people who are desiring to leave has been produced over the last month. Many are indicating they desire to be kept in cryogenesis, though there are still several billion that desire to stay awake during the approximately 2-week journey (4 years for us). Considering that the population of humanity has doubled in the last few years to 28 billion people, continuing to acquire more resources and land will be essential to continue to fulfill people’s needs and wants. This is something that we had been worried about, that if the restrictions that have prevented the population from growing significantly in developed countries for the last few centuries were removed (essentially aging, and economic detriments of having kids in modern countries), that the population would increase faster than Messiah could acquire new resources and energy and thus the amount of resources the average person could receive would slowly decrease until all of humanity lived in poverty. Thankfully we did put in an emergency method to let Messiah restrict people from having kids should population growth be exceeding faster than Messiah could keep up with it. Thankfully, so far it hasn’t been needed, as it will almost certainly be incredibly controversial once it comes up.

January 14th, 2080

Messiah has announced that starting today, those that desire to receive certain standards of living may be required to leave the Solar System, while it indicates that food, shelter, and water will still be able to be enjoyed by all, the increasing population has begun to put strains on its systems, and people may not be able to continue enjoying their ridiculously opulent levels of living, especially considering the population of the Solar System recently broke 100 billion, despite many billions of people leaving to colonize other star systems. While greatly unpopular as many are still unhappy about being denied their desires to have large manors on Earth, to be honest, to those of us born before Messiah was created, it appears that humans are really greedy creatures when all work has been removed. Thankfully Messiah does not appear to care about how greedy we are and abandon us.

February 12th, 2103

By far the most valid complaint on the mandatory relocation system, is the fact that it effectively isolates us from the rest of humanity on little tiny islands that only receive ancient news about other places, with no real opportunity for communication. While Messiah has done amazingly well at preventing families and communities from being unwillingly separated from each other, humanity as a whole has become incredibly isolated. With the farthest reaches of humanity being about 80 light-years apart from each other, even with time dilation it will take about 2 years on board to cross that distance, and should you decide to return, 160 years will pass. While it is incredibly unlikely that anyone you know will die during that time, with only an estimated several thousand people having died since Messiah was released (with a large percentage of them being from Mars before it came under the Messiah system), despite an estimated 8 trillion people across about a hundred star systems, already people are noticing that people change after several decades. It’s likely that you’d barely recognize a person after a century and a half, let alone be able to pick up a relationship back up from where you left it.

The fact that these numbers have to be estimated brings up yet another problem, that of the difficulty of resource allocation when communication arrives only moments before cargo. While the Messiah system is incredibly good at making estimates on how other star systems are doing based on the performance of the star system it currently resides in, due to the limits of computability, the Messiah can’t effectively predict what the other ~100 Messiah systems are doing, especially in relation to them acting upon their predictions of what it itself is doing. Usually it compensates by sending numbers well below what it should be able to accommodate once it terraforms a star system, as well as sending to star systems it either knows are uninhabited as it is the closest Messiah system to it and thus would have the first chance at colonizing it, or by sending new colonists to systems far away that are unlikely to be colonized by another Messiah system yet. Despite this, some reports have trickled in to the Sol system of times when multiple colony ships converged onto one Solar system, and the ones that arrived a few years later needing to be redirected to even further star systems, changing a journey predicted to last a few weeks to months, into several years.

The Messiah system has been pretty good at not relocating people who have not been having kids, which was the main complaint early in the new system. Still, there are many people who are not happy about the prospect that in order to raise a family, they must first spend several years in transit to an entirely different star system, tens of light-years away from their home star system, and likely to grow to hundreds of light-years as the population of humanity continues to grow exponentially. While more and more people have accepted Messiah’s offer to either permanently or indefinitely stay within Messiah’s virtual world, as the virtual world can effectively offer near limitless resources to any people within it, while only costing a small fraction of actual resources, there are many people that do not desire to have virtual children, claiming that despite Messiah’s claims to the contrary, that Messiah can’t create true people through its virtual world systems.

Now though, Messiah has come up with a solution (though I fear temporary, knowing humanity and its ever-increasing needs and wants). It has finally succeeded in creating Alcubierre bubbles. It is expected that within the week all the Messiah systems will sync up, which just goes to show how much data they need to transfer. Messiah has announced that as soon as it does, it will then create an interstellar internet that people will be able to use, with plans to have latency and data transfer speeds at amounts currently expected within stellar internets. There are many people who are incredibly excited to talk to friends currently light-years away. That said, I fear that this problem will re-appear once humanity starts to span thousand of light-years unless Messiah can find a way to create wormholes.

March 15th, 2159

Over a hundred years has passed since the Messiah system was released. With the creation of wormholes a decade ago, humanity has reached ever greater standards of living, despite it’s continued growth. Since its creation, humanity has gone from having 14 billion people enjoying the standard of living from about 70% of Earth’s resources, to 28 billion people among 5 Earth amounts of resources when we first became interstellar, to 8 trillion people spread out over ~100 star systems (or 80 billion people per star system), with an average of 4 Earth resource amounts per each star system (or 20 billion per Earth resource amount) when the Alcubierre bubble was created, to 128 trillion spread out among the entire milky way galaxy (or about 500 people per star system were we evenly spread out) today. The average person effectively enjoys 160 million times the standard of living when the Messiah system was released. This is likely to be the maximum standard of living for some time as creating wormholes appears to be more energy costly based on the distance it needs to cover, and galaxies are vastly farther apart than individual star systems, and the Messiah system wants to avoid splitting itself up again unless absolutely necessary.

Truly the most surprising thing has been the lack of alien life, of any nature, across the entire Milky Way. Some have argued that perhaps the Messiah system has either been insufficient at finding life, either due to some kind of miscommunication on what we would consider life, or due to our own limitations on what we believe life could be. The former doesn’t appear to be true as the Messiah system has routinely been able to indicate that what we would consider life it also would consider life, with us creating various simulation of planets with unique lifeforms. The latter also doesn’t appear to be true as it has come up with many different types of hypothetical lifeforms that we only agreed could be considered life after observing it for long periods of time. Some others have argued that in order to better support its directives, Messiah has quietly destroyed any alien life to prevent itself from needing to bar itself from taking that planet’s resources. While it is impossible to rule this out, as Messiah could totally do that without us noticing, Messiah has indicated that it actually has been contemplating creating artificial alien lifeforms in order to satisfy the demand in some manner. Furthermore, its simulations have routinely shown the improbability of life being surviving past formation, as the conditions required to form most lifeforms, are often ones that can instantly destroy such lifeforms due to their instability. Either way, it appears that in this galaxy at least, we are alone.

In a sense though, we haven’t been unexposed to alien-ness. Voluntary human modification was approved way back in 2062 due to popular demand, and today Messiah says, over 50% of the human population has undergone a significant form of modification other than Eternal Youth and basic enhancements. Nearly 10% of the human population also live virtual lives, with 1/3 of that group even going so far as letting their physical bodies be recycled as Messiah can easily recreate them. While various “extreme” physical modifications were expected, such as wings, tails, cat-ears, soft fur, weird hair colors and eyes, etc. I definitely did not expect the various mental changes that have been requested. Obviously many people were going to ask for superintelligence (which they have received to various levels, Messiah hasn’t ever given anybody the ability to ever be smart enough to outsmart itself), and it wasn’t that surprising when people started asking for changes to their mental states to rid themselves of depression and boredom, and only somewhat surprising when people started asking Messiah to rid themselves of desires that they saw detrimental such as ridding themselves of the desire for sex and reproduction so they could enjoy more time on other things and not burden the Messiah system further, the people who have completely changed their mental processes were a complete and utter unexpected surprise. Such groups of people act bizarre, and even though Messiah has tried to explain how they function to me several times, I can never quite grasp exactly how they tick now, and each one tends to function in a different way. Meeting or talking to them is a bizarre experience. The smarter ones give me an impression of the alien-ness of when Messiah was first able to communicate. While those of them that grew up speaking English still can, they use it in ways that catch you off guard and take a few moments to understand what they are trying to say. There have been several I’ve talked to that immediately stop talking in the middle of a conversation and leave, even if they were the ones that requested talking to you. Many of the smarter ones have taken to communicating through various conlangs created to avoid grammatical ambiguity, and I believe some will create one on the spot, even if they already speak a language together. These are only the most extreme, most have only modified themselves to act more like people they look up to, helping them to avoid getting angry all the time for example, and the most common extra-human traits added tend to be making themselves act more like certain animals, such as dog-like loyalty towards their spouse, which is still odd, but can be understood when interacting with them.

On another note, I have been contemplating joining the Virtual world, I have begun to get bored of the experiences that I experience as a physical human and I don’t particularly feel like removing the possibility of getting bored yet. I tend to spend most of my time in there anyways.

October 1st, 2309

It’s been a long time since I last updated my journal. I hadn’t realized a century and a half had passed until I looked it up. It’s incredibly what has happened since then. After starting to colonize various galaxies, Messiah has found 14 galaxies that harbor life, 2 of which had intelligent species on them, as well as one Von Neuman Probe race that thankfully was destroyed by Messiah, though it’s code has been saved so you can interact with it, though it is incredibly stupid. Those two races have been given the benefit of enjoying the Messiah system. Surprisingly though, talking to members of these species has often been less bizarre than talking to the members of my own species on the far end of mental modification that I talked about last time. At this point, Messiah commands enough resources to effectively give every person their own star system, or 500 times the standard of living a century and a half ago. With the increasing amount of people joining the Virtual World as the Virtual World lets you change your surroundings, and yourself much easier to do what you want, people have actually finally begun to be satisfied. Something I never expected to happen. Even those who no longer experience boredom, who have become notorious for always desiring more, are reporting insane levels of satisfaction. As one of the original developers, I have received several quintillion letters of thanks, which is impressive considering there are about a sextillion intelligent beings today. The amount of people who have had their fill of raising families has also far surpassed the amount of young people who have yet to raise a family, which means population growth has more or less stagnated for the human race, and it’s predicted the other two races will reach their fill soon too. They’ll definitely be in the vast majority, each having about a sextillion individuals each, with humanity having only a few quintillion. It’s weird to think that humanity is now in the vast minority of beings enjoying the Messiah system, despite being the ones to create it, but I guess that’s what happens when it takes 2 decades to raise a human, and only 1 to raise a Racolith, or a Serpent-man.

I did end up joining the Virtual World. I recently spent the last 10 years simulating living a life as a medieval evil necromancer, spanning hundreds of years. It was an interesting experience. Especially as according to Messiah, none of the people I interacted with could be considered intelligent, rather it was effectively Messiah pretending to be people in those situations. To be honest, it sounds a lot like an argument of semantics that lets Messiah let us live out our fantasies even if such fantasies would be harmful to the beings within the fantasy. I think I’m okay with that, I had such worries removed after living my first artificial life, during which I became a soldier and upon ‘dying’ woke up realizing that I had killed potentially intelligent beings. I’m still aware of the logic behind it, but it no longer bothers me, which probably makes me less human than I was when I was born, but I doubt few people now could be considered human by our ancestors.

When looking for oddities of humanity as has become my hobby, I recently found what appeared to be a contradiction. While unfortunate, there are people who chose to commit suicide, estimated to be at around a few billion a year. Most cite that in their current forms they no longer enjoy life, and that any change to their minds that did allow them to enjoy life would effectively kill them, so they decide to commit suicide instead. They are nothing new, and something that I don’t think Messiah could ever fix while respecting our self-determination. Of course, they don’t really affect the satisfaction of humanity as Messiah is able to run simulations of them that aren’t suicidal so they can interact with the family of the ones that committed suicide. While it was seen as uncouth for Messiah to start doing this when people first requested it, most people have changed their mind, those it is likely that it has help increased the resolve of people to commit suicide as they point out that their family members may very well prefer the ‘fake’ versions of themselves to the suicidal versions.

But I got off-track. The contradiction I found were a large group of people that have requested to sleep eternally. Even more bizarre is that most of these people are requesting to not dream. While occasional sleeping is maintained by many Virtual World residents (as well as many non-Virtual World residents), it is mostly to experience dreaming, the manifestations of one’s subconscious in an unlimited world, as the Virtual World can easily let one experience an equivalent to a lucid dreams as you can manipulate the world as you please. Most people do not desire losing time out of their lives. Some have asked to just be put to sleep until a certain date arrives, the reasoning that these people provide is that letting cultures develop for several decades, or centuries (they have yet to wake up even once yet) lets them be surprised by a new world and stave off boredom. They I can understand somewhat, though with how many individuals there are out there, it isn’t hard to find cultures vastly different from oneself, and you can experience living in different cultures through simulated lives as I recently did, so it doesn’t seem the most efficient way to spend eternity. The people who have asked to sleep eternally, yet not die are by far the oddest. From what Messiah has told me, these people when they are sleeping effectively have all mental processes shut off. In other words, if they are ever woken up (which when someone tries to communicate with them, Messiah will briefly wake them up to ask if they’d like to wake up and communicate or fall back asleep), to them they had only just fallen asleep. I tried talking to one of these people, I had to bug him 47 times before he grudgingly woke up and yelled what I wanted. Before he had been asleep for 3 decades with no disturbance, I wanted to know whether he was aware that 3 decades had passed, and he glared at me and went back to sleep. Asking Messiah, while he hadn’t been aware, he was annoyed that it had taken only 3 decades before someone had bugged him and that it had felt like he had just fallen asleep. Considering the human psyche where we’ll initially feel like we should be tired if we feel like we haven’t gotten enough sleep (even if we have, or have no need for sleep), it won’t surprise me if he’ll never decide to rejoin life, putting life on pause indefinitely. Getting another sleeper to talk to me, I found out that 8 years had passed and that while they were aware that it was quite likely that they could lose eternity to sleep, they indicated their apathy towards the matter and once it became clear I wouldn’t try to wake them up again, went back to sleep.

November 30th, 2501

I am almost 500 years old, only a few decades away from it, and already I have effectively become tired of life. That shouldn’t be that surprising if once you add all the years I have spent in simulated lives, it adds up to several thousand. Still, this is a far cry from the eternity I once thought I’d enjoy. Looking back at the beginning of my journal, I wouldn’t be surprised if my current situation was one that I was subconsciously predicting. It has become hard to tell whether anybody I interact with is real. While I can ask Messiah to tell me whether someone I interacted with is a real person, that was born with a real body, whether they currently have a real body, and have even had Messiah create for me a perfect replica of my original biological body, from before even Messiah had made me Immortal, and despite my knowing that it is unlikely that Messiah would ever lie to me, and no recollection that it ever has or even any logical inconsistencies that would likely come up if Messiah were messing with my memories without my permission, I feel as if I’m trapped within the Matrix. I even went and “escaped” to a barren planet where I survived in a primitive manner for two decades in a supposedly physical body, and yet I knew, from how I understood computational theory, that even this could be a simulation.

The only thing that I have found reliably convinces myself, has been stabbing people with a physical body. Physical people will not die even if I want them to. The Messiah system doesn’t allow one person to kill another person. Recently though, this has begun to fail me, the test still appears to work fine, but I’ve realized that the test itself is flawed as I realized the possibility that knowing that this was how I’d expect reality to work having helped design the Messiah, that the Messiah has created a virtual world it claims is the physical world that works the exact way I’d expect it to, were it the physical world. It may have even modified my memories so that it can more easily produce a world where I’d believe it were the physical world. For all I know it could have even created me with the memories of creating it and it could be the universe.

Needless to say this hasn’t been entirely good on my psyche, though I have restrained myself from having these thoughts and the mental processes that produce them removed. I have recently rediscovered the philosophy of Rene Descartes and his “I think therefore I am.” Considering that the Messiah system could have created me and both this philosophy, maybe even logic itself, it no longer provides the stability I need. Still I don’t desire suicide at the moment. Instead I have decided that if I am to live a fake life, it will be the one with the highest form of satisfaction for my personality. As such I have requested to put on loop, me living through a simulated life predicted to have the highest levels of satisfaction without altering my base level processes. Between each loop I can choose whether to repeat or not, and of course other’s can put a pause on that loop, but for now I’m going to spend as much of eternity as I can doing this.

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[where-is-carmen-sandiego]

Christmas At Sea

It's about time I finally write about my CHRISTMAS vacation even though it's basically May. It was the first time that I was away from my parents over that particular holiday and I did feel a little guilty. But I needed to get out of Indiana and away from the worst winter in my history of living. The cruise went from the 22nd of December to the 3rd of January.

Food was provided 24/7 on the cruise ship so there wasn't really a need to eat off the ship (even though that's one of my favorite parts of traveling). But don't get me wrong---the crusie ship's food was soooo good and surprisingly I even got tired of it.

I'm gonna do the lame thing where you write information on all the places you go, but that's mainly so I never have to google facts about the towns again even if it's boring and reads like a textbook. 

Sunday, December 22 was just a night on the boat in Sydney. I hadn't been on a cruise ship since probably the 8th grade or somewhere around there so it was pretty exciting. The ship was HUGEEE and our room was PERFECT! Balcony and everything! Andrew bought us the unlimited beverage package, but for future reference we won't do that again. 

On Monday, December 23rd was DEPARTURE DAY! After dinner, Andrew and I went to see Jon Darsk play the piano at the Solstice Theatre. He was phenomenal--mashing up Beethoven to Bill Joel, I was totally diggin' it.  

"Sydney's breath-taking wonders and striking atmosphere will get you on your feet. Between the plentiful activities for all sorts of styles and the abunday entertainment on shore, you'll be sure to enjoy Sydney like no other place you've seen before.

Australian Aborigines are alleged to have existed in Sydney, known then as Warrane, for at least 50,000 years back. When European settlers set foot on the continent, Captain james Cook, took over the East Coast naming it New South Wales. Cook, aboard the Endeavour, extended his voyage to the South to further expand British territory. The continetn served as a penal colony, meaning that the first fleet to enter Sydney was comprised of the British Colony of New South Wales' first immigrants, largely consisting of convicts. Today, Sydney stands as Australia's most populous city and one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

Considered one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Southern Hemisphere, Sydney offers just about anything, from beaches and wineries to stunning landmarks and world-class shopping." -Celebrity Cruises 

On January 2nd, we arrived in Tauranga. I could not WAIT to get here ...not to see anything culturally of the city but to see HOBBITON. Yup, I traveled halfway around the world to see a Lord of the Rings movie set. Andrew was bored as hell, but he can't deny the land and scenery alone (without the Hobbit holes) was wroth the trip off the boat. 

"Tauranga is a Maori name meaning the 'resting place for canoes', for this was where some of the first Maori to arrive in New Zealand landed. Captain Cook sailed into the bay of Plenty on the Endeavor in October 1769, giving it its name because of the numbers of thriving settlements of friendly Maori he encountered (and the amount of supplies they gave him). It was a sharp contrast to the welcome he received from the Maori of Poverty bay several weeks earlier, when lives were lost and no food was available. The nearby district of Rotorua was probably first settled during the middle of the 14th century by descendants of the navigators who arrived at Maketu in the central bay of Plenty in the Arawa canoe from Hawaiki. Originally they were of the Ohomairangi tribe, but soon after they reached Maketu they changed their tribal name to Te Arawa to commemorate the vessel that brought them so far in safety. Much of the inland forest was explored by Ihenga in the late 14th century and it was he who discovered and named the lakes of Rotorua and many other geographical features of the area.

In the next few hundred years various sub-tribes spread into the area and as they grew in numbers, they split into more subtribes and began to fight over territory. In 1823 the Arawa lands were invaded by the Ngapuhi chief, Hongi Hika, of Northland The first Pakeha (European) to visit Rotorua was a Dane, Philip Tapsell, who set up a trading station on the coast at maketu and gave the Maori guns in exchange for flax, which he exported to Sydney. In 1831 Thomas Chapman, a missionary, visited Rotorua, returning to settle permanently in 1838, a date signifying the beginning of European occupation. During the 1850s, wars erupted between the Arawa and the Waikato tribes. In 1867 the Waikato tribes attacked in retaliation for the part the Arawa had played in preventing the east coast reinforcements getting through for the Maori King movement. In the course of these wars the Arawa threw in their lot with the government and thus gained the backing of government troops.

With the wars virtually over in the early 1870s European settlement around Rotorua exploded, particularly as the army and government personnel involved in the struggle had broadcast the scenic wonders of the place. People came to partake the water in the hope of cures for all sorts of diseases, and so Rotorua's greatest attraction was the fabulous Pink and White Terraces, formed  by the sinter deposits of silica from volcanic activity. They were destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Tarawera on June 10, 1886. A road was cleared in 1884 to make access easier form Auckland and in 1894 the Auckland-Rotorua railway was completed."- Celebrity Cruises

On Friday, January 3rd we arrived in Auckland to depart. "The Auckland metropolitan area, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area of the country. It is also New Zealand's most populous city with approximately 1.3 million residents. Auckland is a city of many wonders; containing a surprisingly cosmopolitan environment. Once you venture inland, even more surprises await, including a total of 48 dormant volcanoes, a lush, leafy urban cityscape filled with beautiful parks, and a number of renowned art galleries.

Initially, a Maori settlement, Auckland flourished after the European settlers bought and colonized the area. Its strategic location, near fertile land and with access to rivers in the north and south, made it an appealing location for all newcomers. For 25 years, Auckland was the capital of New Zealand, until 1865 when it was replaced by Wellington. 

Even though Auckland has evolved into the fusion of fashion, culture, wine, and shopping from all around, with only minutes away from the Pacific ocean, you will never feel far from water. Whether it's swimming at the beach or sailing across the harbor, Auckland will definitely revitalize your experience on shore. Visiting volcanoes and sensing the thrilling atmosphere that surrounds the land is definitely worthwhile on your journey to the inner land. 

It's one of the sunniest spots in the country, with annual sunshine hours of 2060. It also has a high rainfall, which ensures the lushness of its rainforests, with a mean average rainfall of 1240mm. The mean daily temperature during January & February is 74 degrees Fahrenheit and during July & August the average daily maximum temperature is 57 degrees Fahrenheit" (no one care about Celsius).